Emancipation & Liberationhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog
Republican Communist Network, (Scotland)Wed, 20 Feb 2019 16:55:19 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.3THE CONTINUING BREXIT CRISIShttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/20/thecontinuingbrexitcrisis/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/20/thecontinuingbrexitcrisis/#respondWed, 20 Feb 2019 15:10:46 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12912The National Forum of the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC) held on June 30th agreed to take up the issue of a Ratification referendum over Theresa May’s Brexit Proposals (http://radicalindyedinburgh.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-case-for-eu-ratification-referendum.html). A letter advocating this course of action was published in The National on 24.7.19. In his new letter published in The National on Sunday on 17.2.19, Allan Armstrong argues that the time for this has now passed. He advocates a different course of action needed to meet the current political situation.

A ratification referendum could unite those in RIC who supported a Remain vote, and those who supported a Leave vote. The crisis over Brexit has brought about a new situation where Lexiters and Left Remainers have different views of the way to move forward. RIC has continued to organise discussions, where both sides could put their case. Cat Boyd put the case for a new Lexit campaign in her letter to The National on 18.11.19, to which Allan wrote a reply 0n 27.11.19.

Allan’s new letter to the National on Sunday is also written from the perspective of a critical Remainer.

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And ALL includes EU residents and 16-18 year olds denied the vote last time

LETTER TO THE NATIONAL ON SUNDAY, 17.2.19

In all the bourach surrounding Brexit at Westminster, no particular alternative commanding majority support has yet come forward. Last year The National published a letter I had written suggesting that Holyrood organise a ratification referendum over Mays’s proposed Brexit deal (24.7.18). The Scottish people have already voted decisively to reject Brexit, so there is no need to re-run the original 2016 Leave/Remain referendum. One of the most important things about a Holyrood organised referendum is that it could have included all those EU residents and 16-18 year olds included in IndyRef1. An additional benefit of a Holyrood run a ratification referendum is that it would have given focus to the Scottish independence campaign at a time when May had put the shutters up on any IndyRef2.

Given the Tories’ continued resort to all the most anti-democratic powers given to the government under the Crown-in-Westminster set-up, it is unlikely that May would then have conceded some separate Scottish deal. Separate deals are only made for those who want to reinforce all the most reactionary aspects of the Union, like the DUP in Northern Ireland. However, it would have forced the smug Scottish Tories to defend their constant Brexit U-turns. But more importantly, by organising a referendum that included those excluded in 2016, this would have shone a spotlight on the profoundly anti-democratic way by which the Right’s Brexit vote victory was achieved. And given that the Cameron government was responsible for agreeing the franchise criteria in both the IndyRrf1 and the EU membership referenda, it would also have shown up the Tories’ hypocrisy.

The time has now run out for any ratification referendum in Scotland, and the possibility of supporting so-called Peoples Vote has attracted SNP MP’s support. To allow a rerun of the original EU referendum is to invite trouble. The people most affected by any Brexit are EU residents and 16-18 year olds. Their voice needs to be heard, as May and Corbyn manouevre to introduce a new gastarbeiter system of labour control in the new Immigration Bill. We have had to fight a series of defensive battles to stop the Home Office deporting people from Scotland. Our most recent success, supported by SNP MPs, has been the case of Iranian born Rezvan Habibimarand and Mozaffar Saberi.

However, instead of mounting a series of rearguard actions to defend people the UK state deems not to be British subjects, we need to start by including EU residents (and 16-18year olds) as part of our people. Therefore, if a People’s Vote proposal is placed before Westminster, it should only be backed by SNP MPs, following an amendment restoring the franchise arrangements made or IndyRef1.

Allan Armstrong, 15.2.19

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and for an earlier response written immediately after the Brexit vote see:-

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/20/thecontinuingbrexitcrisis/feed/0FROM BLATCHERISM TO MAYBYNISMhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/19/from-blatcherism-to-maybynism/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/19/from-blatcherism-to-maybynism/#commentsTue, 19 Feb 2019 22:47:08 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12889Below is a synopsis of Allan Armstrong’s new pamphlet From Blatcherism to Maybynsism. Chapter 6, Scotland – from ‘Project Hope’ to ‘Project Hate’ – and from ‘Better Together’ to ‘Bitter Together’ can be seen in the bella caledonia blog at:-

THE CONTINUING SHIFT TO THE RIGHTIN THE TRANSITION FROMNEO-LIBERALISM TO NATIONAL POPULISM

Allan Armstrong presents a case that the world is leaving the period of neo-liberal domination and entering a period of national populist domination. This is analogous to the earlier move from post-Second World War social democratic domination, which ended in 1979/80. He emphasises the role of the 2008 Crash in dividing the UK and US ruling classes. This had led to the rapid growth of national populist politics in these and other states. The Right’s winning of the Brexit vote and then the election of Trump (‘Brexit, plus, plus, plus’) has performed a similar role in the transition from neo-liberalist domination to national populist domination that the election of Thatcher and Reagan had played in the earlier transition.

Allan examines the role of Scotland’s Indy Ref1 in scaring the British ruling class, and the significance of their renewed alliance with reactionary unionism in Northern Ireland. He also looks at the response of the neo-liberal Right, the social democratic Left and Irish and Scottish constitutional nationalists to the challenge of national populism. He argues they do not have the politics needed to effectively challenge the growing Right offensive. The Right shows no respect for even the limited democratic forms upheld by social democrats and neo-liberals in their period of global hegemony.

Some neo-liberals have already jumped ship and joined the national populist bandwagon. Left Social Democrats, such as Jeremy Corbyn, are also actively facilitating the consolidation of the Right’s national populism. Within the Labour Party, the Left leadership and the Right are united in support of a gastarbeiter system of labour control to replace the free movement of people from the EU. To do this, they are hiding behind a notion of ‘democracy’, which tacitly accepts ethnic exclusion.

Meanwhile constitutional nationalists from Catalunya to Scotland and Ireland are paralysed in the face of reactionary unitary and unionist state offensives from the Spanish and UK states. This is because national populists are quite prepared to ditch the devolutionary institutions bequeathed by the social democrats and neo-liberals, which the latter build their national self-determination hopes upon.

The recognition of where we actually are politically is a necessity before we can make any further progress.

______________

Contents

1. From global social democratic to global neo-liberal domination; from Butskellism to Blatcherism
2. The 2008 Crash leads to a split in the national ruling classes with a section opting for national populism
3. The growing challenge from China and Trump’s attempts to create a new imperialist alignment involving Putin’s Russia
4. Yesterday’s precedents, amongst those who contested the rise of neo-liberalism, to those contesting the rise of national populism today
5. How the neo-liberals won over former social democrats, and how the national populists intend to win over former neo-liberals and social democrats
6. The precedent of Right national populist domination in reactionary unionist Northern Ireland
7. Scotland – from ‘Project Hope’ to `Project Hate’ – and from ‘Better Together’ to ‘Bitter Together’
8. Corbyn and the Labour Left’s bowing down to ethnic supremacists – a revealing indication of things to come
9. Brexit leads to Maybynism and proposals for a new gastarbeiter system of labour controls under the UK’s flag of ethnic British ‘democracy’.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/19/from-blatcherism-to-maybynism/feed/1BREXIT AND WHAT IT MEANS IN IRELANDhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/19/brexitandwhatitmeansforireland/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/19/brexitandwhatitmeansforireland/#commentsTue, 19 Feb 2019 22:18:45 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12880The E&L blog has been reporting the situation in Ireland since we started up. However, during current Brexit negotiations , the ‘backstop’ has pushed the issue of Northern Ireland to the fore. We are publishing two articles which share a lot in common in their analysis of Ireland, but which offer differing perspectives on the role of the EU. The first is written by David Jamieson and fappeared on the Commonspace blog. The second is written by Allan Armstrong and forms the seventh chapter of his new pamphlet From Blatcherism to Maybynism.

_____________

ANALYSIS – MICRO-POLITICS ISN’T ENOUGH – WE MUST ADDRESS

THE PARTITION OF IRELAND

Debates around the UK border in Ireland and the so called ‘backstop’ bring the crisis elements of the British state into sharper focus.

Among the many hurdles facing the Brexit process and the British Government, perhaps the most intractable so far has proven to be the plans for a backstop plan covering a ‘open border’ on the island of Ireland – movement of people and goods across the UK state’s border in Ireland.

Against this backdrop, Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald has re-opened the question of Irish Unity through a border poll. An issue expected by many to be in some kind of permanent hibernation has now returned as a real force.

The renewed debate around unification reminds us that bold solutions speak more directly to the legacy of unjust conditions and regressive forces in modern British society than the micro-political wrangling of different wings of the UK establishment which has come to define Brexit.

The backstop

The partition of the island by the British state almost a hundred years ago means that two separate regimes exist either side of the artificial border, regimes that will divert further after Brexit. Ireland will remain in EU institutions like the Customs Union and under Tory Brexit plans, Northern Ireland would not.

The backstop plan is an attempt to reconcile Britain being outside the EU with the lived reality and common history of those on both sides of the Northern Ireland-Republic of Ireland border which means that Customs checks and border posts would create real challenges. The backstop would keep both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland effectively within the Customs Union if no new trade relationship is agreed by 2021 between the UK and the EU, but this would leave Northern Ireland as a third country – inside the UK but with a much closer relationship to the EU – something which the Tories and the DUP in Northern Ireland could not accept.

To make matters more delicate still, as in Scotland, only a minority in Northern Ireland voted to leave the EU in 2016. Many on both sides of the border fear the return of a hard border after Brexit, and the implications this would have for trade people in moving across the island. The return of a hard border would also re-establish a potent symbol of British state authority in a country where it has traditionally been reviled.

Partition doesn’t work

There is a potent symbolism in the fact that such a major part of the Brexit debate now revolves around the British state’s relationship to Ireland. Almost a hundred years ago, in 1921, the country was partitioned as part of a response by the British state (and allied Northern landowners and industrialists) to the Irish Revolution from 1916. The borders of the new six county statelet were specifically tailored to exclude the largely Catholic Irish nationalist population – who were also subjected to brutal pogroms upon the founding of the new Northern Irish entity.

With the establishment of a Protestant supremacist ‘Orange State’ Catholics faced exclusion from housing, jobs and many civil and democratic rights. Partition was one of an arsenal of weapons deployed by British and other imperialisms around the world, from India to Africa and the Middle East. There are few examples which could be described as anything short of calamitous. Prevalent features include ethnic, confessional and national tensions that span generations and provoke repeated conflict, economic underdevelopment and wider regional destabilisation.

Though much of the worst supremacist aspects of the Orange State are now gone, the country remains hobbled by the very conditions under which it was founded. The Good Friday Agreement, whilst it ended the worst of the bloodshed from the war that had engulfed the six counties from the late 1960s, also institutionalised communal divisions in the country through the creation of power sharing executives.

This dysfunctional mode of governance has left a generation of both Catholic and Protestant people behind. It has led to democratic and economic dysfunction. And it left largely unresolved the scars from years of discrimination and war.

Incredibly, and in the midst of the Brexit crisis, the Northern Irish Stormont executive has not met for over two years.

Micro-politics vs structural analysis

As has often been the case during the Brexit debate, opposition to the pro-Brexit right has taken on the form of support for the status quo. Much of the commentary around the ‘backstop’ impasse treats it as a wholly unnecessary national embarrassment, the only meaning of which is that the Tory Brexiteers are arrogant, nationalistic fools.Irish ~Home `Rule

This is simply implausible. The whole bloody history of British suppression in Ireland is linked to its economic and geopolitical development as a power. Both the plantation of Ireland by Scottish and English settlers, and Oliver Cromwell’s invasion in the 1600s, reflected the interests of the burgeoning new British order. The Battle of the Boyne accompanied the consolidation of that order in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. In the 1700 and 1800’s, the suppression of Irish movements represented the expansion of the British Empire as a global power, and British resistance to radical liberal and democratic movements that were sweeping Europe in these decades.

Irish nationalism’s pro-Home Rule stance at the start of the 20th century was shattered by the British Empire’s entry into the catastrophe of WW1. What emerged from the ruins was a new republican generation and the Irish Revolution.

In each and every turn, Irish national events were inevitably impacted by developments in British society and those which reverbrated across Europe. Until the early part of the 20th century, Ireland was impacted by British state ascendancy. From then on, through revolution, war in the north and now Brexit, by British state decline.

At each historical turn, the British ruling class could be identified as variously shrewd, bungling, racist, arrogant and worse. But this was never the fundamental reason for the crisis.

Irish Unity today

No one can pretend that the Brexit process is not dangerous for Northern Irish society. Nor can anyone deny the gravity of organising a border poll or even simply agitating for Irish reunification. There are, of course, forces utterly opposed to the idea of Irish reunification.

But it would be naive and historically ignorant to imagine that micro-politics, defending the constitutional status quo, or other tinkering that maintains the fundamental reality of partition, is an adequate response to a crisis that threatens to engulf Irish as well as British society.

It is not adequate either to imagine that reunification would simply solve the crisis, North or South of the border. The creation of the six county state also produced a mirror image in the republic, where church and state were intertwined. In recent decades, and under the tutelage of the EU (which far too many also see as an uncomplicated boon for Irish stability), Ireland has become a model of a European financialised economy, with disastrous consequences which have only exasperated its history as an underdeveloped economy preyed upon by British imperialism (the tragic persistence of massive migrations of labour from the island is one such tragic legacy).

A new movement towards Irish reunification should therefore be the basis for a re-organisation of society, meeting the problems of historical reaction with social and economic justice.

2. THE PRECEDENT OF RIGHT NATIONAL POPULIST DOMINATION IN REACTIONARY NORTHERN IRELAND

The Right populism of Unionists and many, Loyalist as well as fascist forms of Loyalism, have been a feature of ‘Ulster’/Northern Irish politics more than a century. The word ‘fascism’ has often been used somewhat loosely. Here it is used to refer to the existence of street forces, which can sometimes include paramilitaries, able to act independently of the state to impose their reactionary designs The UVF and UDA, which have been responsible for may deaths, injuries and evictions, meet these criteria. What these Loyalists were not able to do in Northern Ireland, in the early 1920s (or since then), was to establish a fully-fledged fascist state like Mussolini’s Fascisti in Italy.

The Orange Stormont regime belonged to the apartheid family of states – the old South Africa, present day Israel, and the old ‘Jim Crow’ South in the USA The fascist wing of Loyalism did not gain to gain complete ascendancy, but ended up helping to create this apartheid-type Northern Irish sub-state, which operated in the interests of the British ruling class and their Ulster Unionist allies. This sub-state maintained its own paramilitary forces – the B Specials and RUC, as well as giving the Orange Order a privileged role.

Both Right populist, Unionism/Loyalism and (neo)-fascist Loyalism represent reactionary unionist forces. Reactionary unionism has been prepared to undermine the existing UK constitutional order, whenever liberal unionists have pushed for, or defended political devolutionary reform. Some reactionary unionists were prepared to take the UK into a civil war in 1914, to prevent the implementation Westminster’s Third Irish Home Rule Act. Following Ireland’s Partition in 1921, and the Loyalist pogroms used to set up a new Orange Stormont regime, reactionary unionism became hegemonic in Northern Ireland until 1969. However, from 1969-72 there was a vibrant Civil Rights Movement, which tried to win the same political, economic and political rights in Northern Ireland that existed elsewhere in the UK. But in 1972, after the British troops stepped into the shoes of the B Specials and RUC, but gunning down rather than batoning down civil rights protestors, a Republican opposition emerged.

In the face of the state’s armed repression, the IRA was prepared to use armed resistance. A wider Republican Movement emerged, with cultural, social and political wings. These challenged most aspects of the UK state and British rule. However, it took more than a quarter of a century for this growing and deep-rooted popular resistance to bring about the end of fifty years Unionist hegemony and the UK state-backed, and the Loyalists’ ferocious defence of what remained of their old order.

But the Irish Republican challenge meant that the UK state was eventually forced to alter course. This was first flagged up in the Conservatives’ Downing Street Declaration in 1993, and consolidated under the New Labour’s Good Friday Agreement in 1998. However, this ‘New Unionism’ was introduced, not to totally dismantle the older Unionist/Loyalist order, but to put the UK state in the position of ‘honest broker’ between Unionism/Loyalism and Nationalism/Republicanism. Pushed by the UK state, Unionism and Loyalism retreated from a position of hegemony to one of domination. This was copper fastened by the provisions of the Good Friday and St. Andrews (2006) Agreements.

The new Stormont was given a Unionist/Loyalist veto over any prospect of Irish reunification. A talking-shop was set up at Stormont to help manage the sectarian/ethnic divide. The US and EU were brought in to provide further ballast for this, neo-liberal, ‘post-colonial’, model settlement (another was introduced in post-apartheid South Africa). But Stormont has introduced no reforms. It was set up to allow grievances to be aired, UK state financial subventions to be divided up, and appeals to be made to the UK government to arbitrate. Only two groups were given political recognition, Unionists/Loyalist and Republicans/Nationalists. Partition now took on new forms, which the personnel running the UK state hoped it would be easier to control.

Although there was a Unionist/Loyalist veto over any Sinn Fein moves to get Stormont to move towards Irish reunification, there was also a Nationalist/Republican veto preventing a return to the old Unionist/Loyalist supremacy. This is one reason why the reactionary unionist DUP is privately happy, despite public denials, to see the Good Friday Agreement, which is underwritten by the EU, ended under Brexit. The DUP is keen to retain its Loyalist voting base, including the neo-fascist paramilitaries. These still hold sway in many Loyalist communities, helped by state funding to bribe them to behave themselves. This DUP connection to Loyalist paramilitaries was shown when DUP member, Emma Little-Pengelly, after getting married, took on the hyphenated surname, Little-Pengelly. This way she could use the surname of her Loyalist gunrunner father, Noel Little, when she campaigned in Belfast. She won the South Belfast Westminster constituency in 2016, ousting the Irish constitutionalist nationalist SDLP MP.

Ultimately the DUP, TUV and other Loyalists want to restore Unionist majority rule. The 2012 Loyalist Flag Riots, led to the burning out of the liberal unionist, Alliance Party offices, and the intimidation of their members in East Belfast. This reactionary campaign paved the way for the return of the then Alliance-held Westminster East Belfast constituency to the DUP in the next election. Since the DUP took the South Belfast constituency, the UVF have intimidated Catholic residents away from Cantrell Close, which had been built as non-sectarian housing. The misnamed ‘Peace’ Walls, which divide Nationalist and Unionist communities in Belfast, have become the most visible new borders of Partition. They are supposedly to come down by 2023, but the UVF and UDA act as the main forces behind these walls, ensuring that Unionist and Nationalist communities become even more exclusive.

In the North, reactionary unionism remains dominant. Instead of moving forward, the DUP and Loyalists want to turn the clock back. To do this they have resorted to the psychological compensatory mechanisms used by other national populists to maintain support in the absence of any material rewards. Unionist and Loyalist organisations uphold the right of their members to intimidate Nationalists in their streets, homes and schools. Triumphalist Loyalist marches, are attended by unionist MPs, MLAs and local councillors. Stormont and Belfast city council sponsor Loyalist bonfires. The PSNI assist in removing non-unionist residents in Loyalist majority areas, or migrant East European Gypsies from Belfast’s streets and hostels. This symbiotic relationship of the state with national chauvinist, racist and other reactionary forces in promoting discrimination and eviction, is something the wider national populist and reactionary unionist forces in the UK hopes to develop.

And now, following the Brexit vote, reactionary unionists see considerably greater opportunities to advance their sectarianism and other reactionary policies. The UDA hasbeen involved in behind-the-scenes deals with the DUP to pressure for a Brexit that meets its aims. And, in return for propping up May’s government, the DUP has accepted the suspension of the post-Good Friday Stormont. This also ends the embarrassment caused by their growing corruption and their continued opposition to social policies, which younger people from both communities support. DUP leader, Arlene Foster’s own involvement in Cash-for-Ash corruption could be buried, now that Stormont is mothballed.

At the highpoint period of liberal unionism in the UK, the DUP’s Peter Robinson, Ian Paisley and Ian Paisley Junior had been prepared to give Stormont a go. This led to the emergence of the ‘Chuckle Brothers’ phenomenon – Ian Paisley Senior and Martin McGuinness. Robinson and Paisley Junior found the new Stormont provided plenty of opportunities to line their own pockets. However, the more hardline Arlene Foster thinks there is more to be gained for reactionary unionism at the UK level. Westminster, under the control of the Tory Right, now forms the DUP’s backstop for ‘Ulster’ reaction. And if May still holds on to some of Blair and Camerons’ old social liberalism, detested by the DUP, then the socially reactionary Jacob Rees-Mogg is there in the wings. He has visited Northern Ireland, following a path to ‘Ulster’ adopted by UKIPs Nigel Farage – notice those UK, not just British initials in the party’s name.

The DUP now appears to be in the position of being the ‘Ulster’ Loyalist tail able to wag the British Unionist dog. That could still change in the future. It did so for a disheartened Conservative and Unionist, Sir Edward Carson, when the UK government partitioned his beloved unionist Ireland under the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1921; and it did so for Ulster Unionists, when previously ardent UUP supporter, Margaret Thatcher, signed up to the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985. However, in Northern Ireland, there is no longer any pretense of the UK government acting as the ‘honest broker’.

May’s government is the most reactionary that has existed at Westminster, since Lloyd George’s post-First World War Coupon Coalition government. This was dominated by the Conservative Unionists (including the Irish Unionists) with many Liberal, a few Labour and some further Right MPs. Perhaps the main difference today is, that over the Brexit issue, the DUP does not even represent the majority in the Six Counties. But May does not care. She has resorted to all the most reactionary features of the UK state to override Westminster, Holyrood and Cardiff Bay. She welcomes DUP support. She is ‘taking back control’ on behalf of the national populist wing of the British ruling class, ready to step up their reactionary offensive. She will use whatever forces help her at a particular time, and discard them when they become an obstacle. Trump is another master of this technique.

The Good Friday Agreement brought Sinn Fein on board, as a junior partner in the running of the Northern-Irish sub-state. The now constitutional nationalist, Sinn Fein accepts the reformed Stormont set-up, which has an inbuilt Unionist/Loyalist veto. There is very little likelihood of Stormont, even if it were to be resuscitated, voting to allow an Irish reunification referendum to take place. And without this vote, there is even less chance of a UK government allowing such a referendum,

The reformed Stormont was created as part of the UK state’s liberal ‘New Unionist’ strategy to head off rising national democratic movements in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Sinn Fein hoped that an extended period of peace would create the conditions within Northern Ireland, whereby enough of those from the GFA’s officially designated Unionist/Loyalist bloc would eventually vote to allow a referendum on Irish reunification; and that a liberal unionist government in the UK would facilitate this. Joint membership of the EU would continue to soften the Partition on the Border. It was thought that this would also contribute to the breaking of down barriers between North and South.

However, in the post-Brexit voting, 2016 Westminster general election, the DUP won all but one traditionally Unionist seat. They retook the only seat held by the liberal unionist, Northern Irish, Alliance Party in East Belfast, as well as that of the constitutional nationalist SDLP in South Belfast. Under Westminster’s first-past-the-post electoral system, the DUP now holds three out of Belfast’s four seats. In contrast, earlier in 2016, in the Stormont election in with its transferable vote electoral system, Sinn Fein held 7 seats and the DUP only 5 seats, out of the city’s total of 20. This is another reason why the DUP is happy to mothball Stormont. And the DUP holds the whip hand over the conditions for any Stormont resuscitation.

And following the Brexit vote, the majority of the British ruling class now also supports reactionary unionism with regard to the UK constitution. They were shocked by the close vote in Scotland’s IndyRef1, and the subsequent 2015 SNP landslide victory at Westminster. This is why they have abandoned the idea of any further experimentation with liberal unionist constitutional reform. Their reactionary unionism means falling back on the most anti-democratic features of the Crown-in-Westminster. They are prepared to undo concessions made under the earlier liberal unionist order. The Brexit campaign and its result greatly strengthened reactionary unionism. Therefore, Sinn Fein’s Irish reunification strategy, based on an alliance of constitutional nationalism and liberal unionism, has hit a metaphorical brick wall, but still one as hard as the concrete ‘Peace Walls’ of Belfast.

Sinn Fein has ditched much of its older Irish populist politics – including opposition to the EEC/EU. Sinn Fein began to see the EU as the provider of an economic framework, which transformed the old inward looking, still big farmer dominated, traditional Ireland. This Ireland had still been economically dependent upon the UK. Following the precedent of the one-time, official Communist, but now social democrat parties, and the Left Greens, Sinn Fein joined the European United Left – Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group at the EU’s Strasbourg parliament. Although, the EU was being increasingly dragged along a neo-liberal course, the GUE/NGL’s international, Left social democratic, diplomatic alliance still saw the possibilities of changing the EU. Sinn Fein also adopted Left social democratic, neo-Keynesian economic policies. They saw a European Ireland as offering better prospects for longer term economic, social and political reform than an Ireland outside the EU. This would be even more prey to the UK and US.

The drastic treatment meted out to Ireland by the post-2008 EU Troika and by the UK government and banks, did not fundamentally alter Sinn Fein’s course. Despite the even more severe treatment meted out by the Troika to fellow GUE/NGL member party, Syriza, in Greece, it had not been the Left Grexiters who benefitted, but the Right Grexiter and neo-fascist Golden Dawn. Young Greeks now mostly consider themselves to be Greek Europeans. They have no wish to return either to the more insular days of civil war, or of military rule, which preceded Europeanisation. They can now build new lives, with far more international connections, including work, education and travel. Similarly, young people in Ireland are now more likely to see themselves as progressive Irish-Europeans than as traditional conservative Catholic Irish. Long used to emigration, whether to the US or UK, the EU added new welcome options for young people This has contributed to two impressive referenda victories in what had been as socially conservative Catholic Ireland – the first over gay marriage, the second over abortion rights.

A sizeable section of Sinn Fein’s older members, particularly in rural areas, still hang on to aspects of their socially conservative Catholicism. But the new, more socially progressive, Sinn Fein leadership, with Mary Lou Macdonald in the South and Michelle O’Neill in the North, have relied heavily upon EU induced liberalisation from above to overcome their party’s traditional social conservatism. As a consequence the party has followed, rather than led, the young people mainly responsible for initiating these new social changes.

There is now a campaign to extend these social changes to the North, where the DUP and other reactionaries have used their veto powers to obstruct any social advance. There is also the Borders Communities Against Brexit campaign. However, whether at Stormont, with its Unionist/Loyalist in-built veto, or at Westminster with its Tory/DUP alliance, reactionary unionism is in the ascendancy.

The liberal constitutionalism, which informs EU politics, meant that the GFA transcended the anti-democratic, unwritten, UK constitution. The GFA amounted to an international treaty guaranteed by the EU and the US. The significance of the opposition of the Brexiteers, including the DUP, to the EU is clear. They see the need for the UK, with its reactionary Crown-in-Westminster powers “to take back control.” An unwritten constitution allows the British ruling class to make it up as they go along, something May now does daily.

But this new situation provides a challenge for the now constitutionalist nationalist Sinn Fein in Ireland, as well, as for the constitutional nationalist SNP in Scotland. They have placed the further advance of their reunification and/or independence hopes upon liberal political support in the EU and the US, and upon liberal unionist accommodation in the UK. These political pre-conditions are no longer there.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/19/brexitandwhatitmeansforireland/feed/2WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE IMMIGRATION BILL?http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/15/whats-wrong-with-the-immigration-bill/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/15/whats-wrong-with-the-immigration-bill/#respondFri, 15 Feb 2019 19:00:40 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12873On January 29th members of the Right and the Left of the Labour Party were allowed by Jeremy Corbyn to allow Theresa May’s government to get the first stages of the Tory government’s new Immigration Bill through Westminster. This paves the way for a post-Brexit gastarbeiter-type system of controls over worker migration. We are reposting an article from Global Justice Now which explains the intention behind this bill.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE IMMIGRATION BILL?

The Immigration Bill threatens in the UK to the ‘hostile environment’ for migrants. The hostile environment, the brainchild of Theresa May when she was Home Secretary, seeks to make life unbearable for people without the ‘correct’ immigration papers, and turns teachers, doctors, landlords and employers into border guards. This has already had a devastating effect on thousands of people, but the Immigration Bill does nothing to fix the hostile environment and instead will expose millions more people to it.

The Immigration Bill also signals the end of free movement for millions of people between the UK and the EU. Of course, this has always been at the centre of the government’s vision of Brexit. But this is a backward step for human rights. Free movement gives everyone, not just the wealthy, the crucial right to live, love and work in the place of their choice without fear. We should be trying to defend and extend free movement, not the other way round.

The Immigration Bill also increases the government’s power over our immigration system. Just like the trade bill, the immigration bill gives the government ‘Henry VIII’ powers to make changes to immigration rules without parliamentary oversight. But the catalogue of errors made by the Home Office show that we need more scrutiny, not less.

What next?

The Immigration Bill is making its way through parliament right now. We’re monitoring progress and, at the right time, we’ll be calling on you to take further action. Right now, we need to be building public awareness about the problems with the bill, so we’re asking you to share this video.

Photo showing Brian Higgins on a picket at the furthest left – where else!

Brian Higgins, a militant in the building industry, first in UCATT and later in UNITE, has been taken into hospital. Brian has been the most blacklisted worker in the UK. For many years before he would have retired, he was unable to get work. This put immense pressure both on Brian and his family, particularly his ever-supportive wife, Helen. Following the public exposure of the blacklist in the building industry, Brian found strong evidence of collaboration between the employers and a UCATT official in his blacklisting. That official cited in a redacted document was Jerry Swain.

Subsequently, Len McCluskey arranged for UCATT to be taken over by UNITE. In the process, Swain was appointed as a full-timer. Brian, the rank and file Building Worker Group and other union members have tried to raise this issue with McCluskey. McCluskey continually brushes the issue under the carpet.

Brian thanks all those who have supported his cause, and the cause of other blacklisted workers. This support has come from many including the Building Worker Group, activists in Grassroots Unite, the Scottish Federation of Socialist Teachers and the Emancipation & Liberation blog. Until our trade unions have kicked out all those who collaborate with the employers, then our fight for justice, improved pay and conditions and safety at work will be undermined. Despite Brian’s current incapacitation the struggle goes on, and Brian’s supporters will continue to raise these issues.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/08/a-statement-on-behalf-of-brian-higgins-blacklisted-building-worker/feed/1THE ENIGMATIC GILETS-JAUNEShttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/04/the-enigmatic-gilets-jaunes/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/04/the-enigmatic-gilets-jaunes/#respondMon, 04 Feb 2019 22:01:38 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12852Mike McNair of the CPGB (Weekly Worker) has written a critical analysis of the Gilets-Jaunes protests in France. He suggests that the politics stemming from this movement could move both Right and Left.

THE ENIGMATIC GILETS-JAUNES

We have just seen the ninth weekend of gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protests in France. Numbers were slightly up compared to previous occasions, with the government claiming 84,000 took to the streets across the country and 8,000 in Paris, while 80,000 police were deployed France-wide.

The movement has been widely celebrated by the left – for example, the Socialist Workers Party in Britain;1 and also by the right: for example, the hard-right Italian interior minister, Matteo Salvini. This poses two political questions, both of which are the subjects of present debate.

The first is whether the movement is on the road to victory – or whether it is, rather, dragging on into a slow decline, like the British anti-war movement after the actual invasion of Iraq. Spiked (January 11), interviewing Christophe Guilluy, claims in its headline that ‘The gilets jaunes are unstoppable’.2 On the other hand, Léon Crémieux in International Viewpoint (January 12) is a good deal more sceptical about their prospects, though he hopes that the movement can be kept alive, since

If it were to end at the beginning of this year, not only would it be more difficult for other mobilisations … to develop in different sectors, but the only outlet for politics would once again become the electoral system – either in negative terms through abstention or through a match between the France Insoumise and the FN [the far-right Front National, now rebranded as Rassemblement National], from which the latter would benefit.3

The second question is what sort of movement is this – of the right or the left? A ‘1968’, as some leftwing writers think, or a ‘Tea Party’? A distinct, but related, question is: is the political outcome of the movement likely to be a move to the left, or a further movement towards right-populist nationalism? The two issues are connected: a defeated mass movement of the left may perfectly well lead, through demoralisation, to a sharp shift to the right.

Victory or defeat?

The issue of the success or failure of the movement is not at all easy to address from outside France. What follows is therefore pretty tentative. But it has to be said that it will only be true that “The gilets jaunes are unstoppable” if they are to be understood as a right-populist mobilisation, and their victory will take the form (even if delayed) of a Rassemblement National government and “Frexit” – to set alongside Brexit, the right-populist government in Italy, the Orbán administration in Hungary, Polish Law and Justice, and so on. It is understandable that the Brexiteers of Spiked, who have, like Orbán, passed from the left, though liberalism, to the populist right, should be gung-ho for this view. But, so far as the gilets jaunes are to be understood as a revolt against neoliberalism as such from the left (and this is certainly an element of the movement), they are probably headed for a lingering defeat.

The narrative background is as follows. The trigger for the protests was the rise in fuel prices, thanks to increased taxation. These were sold as ‘green taxes’, but they came in a context in which the government of president Emmanuel Macron has reduced taxes for the rich; while (like many other places in Europe) public transport and other services are being cut, while urban property with access to public transport has been escalating in price.

The movement started with an online petition attracting 300,000 signatures by mid-October, and the first direct action followed on the weekend of November 17, also involving 300,000 or more in blocking roads and some fuel depots. Since then there have been weekly events, involving relatively small, but sharply militant and destructive, protests in Paris, and much wider but often less spectacular protests across France. Numbers, as indicated above, fell after the first weekend, but have risen again in the new year.

Blocking roads is not a particularly innovative form of protest for France. Farmers have done it repeatedly over one or another grievance. Fishermen and strikers have at different times blockaded Calais. Nor is it terribly unusual for protests in France to ‘turn violent’; the tradition goes back well before May 1968, though the événements may have rejuvenated it. Communication and organising protests via social media is flagged by some fans as a novelty, but in fact it only works if the state is caught short by an initial rapid development (otherwise counter-measures to shut down such communication or spread confusion can be effective).

What was distinctive about the gilets jaunes was the image of the high-visibility vest itself. Required to be carried by all drivers in France as part of breakdown kit, it was flagged for protests not just by farmers, etc, but for all drivers (and hence for much of the suburban and rural population). Associated with this is the very high level of public support for the protests (up to 84% in polls in late November). Another feature has been the persistence of the actions, which may be the result of the choice to go for weekends only.

Macron’s response has been pretty classic carrot-and-stick, combined with ‘kick the can down the road’. First, the carrot: the fuel tax increases were put on hold in early December. At the same time electricity prices were frozen until March 2019. Then the president made windy declarations promising various concessions, which turn out to be paid for by some other levy on the working population, but not by the restoration of the wealth tax he abolished on taking office, or any of the other, less transparent, tax cuts for the rich he has introduced.

Next, ‘kick the can down the road’. Macron in his December 10 speech announced that there would be a ‘great national debate’, in which many things, including additional immigration controls, are up for discussion – but not the basic neoliberal framework or restoration of the wealth tax. People have been invited to submit cahiers de doléances (lists of complaints) – a recollection of the revolution of 1789.

The ‘grand debate’ was launched on January 15 – not without a hiccup, as it turned out that the former minister employed to organise it was to be paid €176,000, and she was forced to resign. But this fairly minor embarrassment will not affect the value of the tactic, which is a routine one for governments (and corporate lobbyists). Decisions are often made and implemented too quickly for opposition to develop. But, once opposition to government policy does develop, and it is forced to concede further discussion, the issue is to be the subject of prolonged debate (and as many red herrings as possible introduced) in the hope that opponents’ willpower and resources will be exhausted by a prolonged struggle.

Here, the tactic has the great merit of distracting this programmeless single-issue campaign from the core of its concerns: the shifting of taxation from the rich onto the relatively poor, and the dishonesty of the Macron election campaign, for the benefit only of the man’s mates in finance. The doléances will naturally go all over the shop.

Finally, the stick. In early December the government authorised substantial pay increases for the police. At the same time there have been significant increases in police violence against gilets jaunes protestors; a crackdown in arrests; and kite-flying for proposals to ‘register’ unauthorised demonstrators – a technique of repression already trialled on ‘football hooligans’. Government may be unable, as yet, to persuade the hard core to give up. But it can drive away the softer periphery – and solidify the loyalty of the state forces.

The intended result is indicated by a January 16 article, spun to suggest that it is already happening: “Gilets jaunes: is the backlash underway?” argues that public support for the protests is ebbing.4 We can remember such articles all too well in the later months of the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-85, or in relation to the later anti-war demonstrations. The authors of such articles want the movement to ebb, but that does not alter the fact that these tactics usually work. Just continuing with weekly protest after weekly protest does not usually lead to victory.

What is most likely is that the protests will peter out over the next weeks; there will be extensive demoralisation; and there will be a shift into some form of electoral politics. It is unlikely to be a shift towards leftwing political organisation.

Politics

A limited sociological study of some of the gilets jaunes protestors was carried out for Le Monde and translated for Verso Books in December.5 The messages that come from this study were that this was predominantly a working class or lower middle class movement. There were higher than national proportions of white-collar workers (relative to manual workers) and of the self-employed. This was not the organised working class: 64% thought that trade unions had no place in the movement; 81% thought this of political parties; 33% said they were “neither left nor right”. The predominant complaints, as well as the unfairness of the tax system, were of general inequality and the belief that the constitutional order needed “total reform”.

As the authors say, their findings do not point to a movement of the far right or one primarily animated by immigration. But what they do point to is a classic movement of the traditional small business and peasant petty bourgeoisie (which is a substantially larger class in France than it is in this country) and the unorganised working class – with the usual illusions of such movements, that anti-partyism and radical reform of the constitution without serious economic change can overcome the problems. The method of the protests – a scaled-up version of peasants’ road-blocking and so on – points towards the same political assessment.

This is not to condemn the movement as such. In the first place, the working class needs to win at least a section of the petty bourgeoisie over to its side if it is to defeat capital and project a socialist alternative.

Secondly, the demand for progressive taxation is one of the historical programmatic planks of the workers’ movement, going all the way back to the Communist manifesto. In this respect, that part of the left which has succumbed to the temptations of ‘green taxes’ should see what this leads to – neoliberal variants. The socialist approach is not one of carbon taxes, but of direct planning to control carbon emissions – including, among other things, the defence and restoration of public transport.

Thirdly, the idea that France needs radical constitutional reform – as some of the sociologists’ respondents said, a “Sixth Republic” to replace the Bonapartist-presidentialist Fifth Republic created by de Gaulle’s 1958 coup – is right.

The problem is that Macron’s ‘great debate’ will not lead to such a constitutional revolution. Nor will cahiers de doléances produce a coherent constitutional and economic alternative. Nor is the currently favoured single-issue reform – the introduction of the Swiss- or Californian-style right of “citizens’ initiative” to trigger referendums any sort of solution. French activists should look across the channel and see what our three recent referendums have got us. Indeed, they should just look at Switzerland or California …

What is needed to construct a platform which can pose an alternative to the corporate lobbyists’ constitution is a party, with its own publications, independent of the advertising-funded media and based on a political programme.

The lack of a party and, indeed, the anti-partyism of the gilets jaunes protests will necessarily imply that, like the similarly anti-partyist ‘social forums’ of the early 2000s and the Occupy movement of 2011-12, the protests will run into the sand. They cannot pose a political alternative to the Fifth Republic.

What party politics is on offer, when the protest movement does run into the sand? Politico’s most recent poll for the forthcoming European parliamentary elections shows the Rassemblement National (RN) on 22%, Macron’s En Marche on 19%, Mélenchon’s ambiguous leftwing France Insoumise on 10%, Les Républicains on 9%, Debout la France (‘France First’) and the Greens on 7%, and the Parti Socialiste on 6%.6 Other polls put the Parti Communiste on 2% and the Mandelite Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) on 2.5% – neither is likely to get representatives elected.7

The NPA is an ‘If it moves, salute it’ group, and hence cannot give political leadership in the form of offering an alternative programme and constitutional conceptions. As for the PCF, it has been for a long time accommodating to French nationalism, and more recently, France Insoumise has done so too.

The problem with this approach is: ‘Why vote for the left-nationalist monkey, when you can vote for the Le Pen organ-grinder?’ The result is likely to be that mass dissatisfaction with the Fifth Republic among petty bourgeois and unorganised workers, after the failure of the protest campaign, issues in mass votes for the RN.

The French left needs to address the party question. Celebrating and tail-ending the gilets jaunes is neither a substitute for solving this problem nor a route to do so l

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/02/04/the-enigmatic-gilets-jaunes/feed/0CORBYN, LABOUR AND THE TORIES’ IMMIGRATION BILL – A dialoguehttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/31/12823/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/31/12823/#respondThu, 31 Jan 2019 18:21:12 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12823This is a new dialogue over the consequences of Brexit following the Corbyn-led Labour Party helping Theresa May get the second reading of the Tories’ Immigration Bill through on Wednesday 29th January

This dialogue came about in response to a posting Allan Armstrong made on the Republican Socialist Alliance list. It was also taken up by Phil Vellender (Editorial Board of The Chartist) on his Facebook page.

A reply from ‘Resist’ to a Brexiteer troll claiming that the 2016 Referendum was democratic (on RSA list and Phil’s Facebook page)

A Response to ‘Resist’ from Allan Armstrong (RSA list and Phil’s Facebook page)

6. Robert Peston, What Corbyn’s meeting with May reveals about Labour’s Brexit plan in The Spectator

A response from Allan Armstrong (RSA list and Phil’s Facebook page)

Allan Armstrong (RSA list and Phil’s Facebook page)

1. Allan Armstrong on the Republican Socialist Alliance list, 29.1.19

In recent submissions to the blog I have pointed out how Corbyn’s policy on migration is now to the Right of Cameron’s before the Euro-referendum. Tonight on May’s new Immigration bill, Corbyn backed the manouevres to allow her to get the second stage of this draconian new anti-migrant bill through. see:-

For some time I have argued that Corbyn and co would help the Tories bring in a new gastarbeiter system. Tonight is the lowest that Corbyn & co have sunk, even one stage lower than saying they could come to deal with the DUP. You have Weekly Worker arguing that the danger of supporting a new Euro-referendum is that it would prepare the ground for a National Government. The Tories have said they are preparing for the use of troops, Rees-Mogg has called for the suspension of parliament. Corbyn’s response – silence! As far as opposing the Tories goes (and the DUP) on Brexit, we already have a National Government with Corbyn as junior partner.

As I have also pointed out there is little difference between Corbyn and the neo-Blairites over migration. Furthermore, Corbyn refuses to challenge them, except when he is supporting May over Brexit. It would seem to be a small mercy if the neo-Blairites did finally move against him, taking direct responsibility themselves for attacking migrants. However, from another viewpoint, maybe we have to live through a continued Corbyn leadership to show genuine Socialists just how miserable British Left social democracy really is.

This is a just a piece of apologetics. There are 256 Labour MPs, yet only 178 were present at the vote. And even that needed pressure. A one-line whip – and no come back – come on!

The role of Diane Abbot in all this was despicable, although on a par with John McDonnell (one time supporter of a united Ireland) being used to make overtures to the DUP to prop up a future Labour government.

____________

2. Phil Vellender, on RSA list and Phil’s Facebook page, 29.1.19

Corbyn and Project Truth

Apparently, those of us who support Remain and, as in my case, are calling for a Ratification Referendum, rather than a People’s Vote or, worse still, the misnomered Second Referendum, must not put Labour’s electoral hopes at risk by demanding Corbyn calls a public vote on all our futures. The reason: to do so would lose a shed load of votes in the north. Of course, I want Corbyn to come out for Remain, but given he backs the delusional Lexit position, there’s not hope in hell of him doing so.

However, the current Labour strategy constitutes a lie, or at best, a deliberate masking of the facts, about the reality of what Brexit will mean, for Labour’s northern power base. In courting these ‘left behind’ votes, Labour is observing the people’s will/ democratic (majoritarian) vote, but in so doing Labour has effectively jettisoned the only true USP Corbyn claimed: his honesty and integrity.

What will those campaigning for Labour on the doorsteps say to Labour supporters in the ‘northern power base’? Tell them not to worry, Jeremy/Labour are about more than Brexit? Getting a Labour government will be the answer to all their concerns? Well, naturally I’d trust Corbyn’s Labour with the NHS and policies for the poor over the Tories any day. But is this enough?

For a start, nearly all the manifesto policies that chime with those who are really struggling in May’s Britain, and those Corbyn’s Labour are campaigning around, actually relate to specifically *British /UK*, Tory-created ills; for example, bedroom tax, austerity, UC, child poverty and many more.

But how does leaving the EU, an act universally accepted by most authorities on the subject as being equivalent to mass self-harm for our economy, address or ameliorate those aforementioned, Tory-inspired social evils? Did the EU demand Osborne and Danny Alexander (remember him?) embark on austerity, bring in the bedroom tax and all the other instruments of impoverishment that Cameron and then May joyfully soiled their pants over?

Moreover, did the EU demand that May deal so cruelly with the Windrush community, create wholesale insecurity through her ‘hostile environment’, demand an anti-immigrant campaign be stoked up by a non-dom owned, xenophobic, Tory press, show disdain for the Grenfell community?

If, as I believe, Brexit was a predominantly an English nationalist uprising against Westminster, one which the Referendum provided an outlet for – by deflecting the responsibility away from the Tories/ UK on to Brussels, migrants, Polish or Eastern European workers – then the answer has to be ‘no’. A friend has labelled my attribution of the Brexit voting phenomenon to English nationalism as ‘patronising’. It is a serious charge and deserves an answer.

I would suggest that it is, in fact, Corbyn and his Morning Star Lexiteer advisors and supporters who are patronising the electorate. I do not pretend the ‘EU is Europe’ nor that the EU is perfect. I lived in Europe for a total of13 years so I have some insights into its shortcomings. However, selling voters a poisonous Labour-Lexit version of Brexit snake oil based on disingenuous pandering to anti-migrant prejudice, one whipped up by rightwing newspapers that Corbyn himself detests, is not a socialist message, at least not one I recognise. It is the message of the untrustworthy, those willing to say whatever will get them grubby votes.

Corbyn and his Eurosceptic acolytes are lying to the electorate by uncritically bolstering their Leave beliefs, rather than giving leadership and challenging them. Which views would their doorstep campaigners not seek to challenge? And how many of these possibly socially conservative Labour (?) voters would ever support a Labour Party in any case, when most of them, as likely as not, feel as alienated from today’s ‘middle class’ Labour as they do from a high street with all those foreign languages being spoken and that burgeoning number of foreign shops? Seriously?

Corbyn has made it clear he supports a euphemistic version of Tory policies around what he terms ‘managed migration’. Many potential Labour voting EU citizens outside Labour’s northern power base get little reassurance from that formulation. Why would any Labour leader with Corbyn’s socialist credentials be prepared to add to the insecurity of hundreds of thousands of EU citizens by cavilling on his position on the EU?

The fact is that a Corbyn government would not be prevented from carrying out its nationalisation programme by the EU. However, Corbyn has no idea how he will replace the jobs and investment we currently enjoy through our EU membership. He has no real idea about which economic order he will join up with post the EU.

Corbyn could have made the arguments to his northern power base about the many positives of EU membership, which are too many to list here, but, instead, he has, in effect, capitulated to the Tory Brexit story by not going out and arguing the case for Europe. Instead he has joined with those peddling clichés and untruths about the EU ie the ones Lexiteers have peddled. And if he hasn’t actually articulated them, he has silently assented to them. That is his style.

Allowing voters to cling to a prejudice-wracked, revived English nationalism, one growing more dangerous by the day, even via a message clothed in socialist phraseology, is not leadership. Instead of accommodating the misconceptions about Europe, or seeking to explain that the reasons why these constituencies might feel so ignored stem from UK misgovernment, Labour has opted to sit on its political hands.

May and the Tories shut down opponents of her deal by holding up the spectre of the wrath of the fascist mob. We are saboteurs, traitors, snowflakes. Now it appears that for many of us of the 48%, who earlier had joined Labour in those heady days of 2015, voted for Corbyn twice (as in my case) argued for his leadership in multiple conversations and phone ins (as in my case) we are being shut down the Corbyn way.

Having ignored Remain voters totally since 2016, remember Milne and his Stalinist advisors didn’t think we Remain Labour voters were of any further use to their Corbyn Project, Remain Labour voters still came out to campaign vigorously for Labour in 2017.

Now it appears we must shut up lest we get blamed for alienating voters from whom Labour’s leadership has concealed the truth of the disaster that awaits us post Brexit. Instead of challenging the multifarious myths of the Leave campaign, post 2017 Corbyn has continued to let them go unchallenged. Now who will these same northern voters blame in turn, when the economy tanks in the next few years?

Corbyn and his narrow, conservative, Lexit cabal cannot blame those leaving the Party if they feel all he wants is their votes without paying any attention to their aspirations or needs, while they see he will happily accept, unchallenged, the price of keeping his northern power base Leave votes is permanent evasion. Northern power base voters mustn’t be told the awful truth about Lexit/Brexit: that whatever the deal, they will be hit hardest.

That is neither honourable not leadership.

Response from Allan Armstrong (RSA list), 29.1.19

An excellent piece, and I would agree with you that Right wing English nationalism is very much at the core of Brexit. However, Brexit is able to project itself further in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by appeals to reactionary Scottish-British, Welsh-British, ‘Ulster’-British identities, promoted by the UK state. The Orange Order and Loyalists are the most organised core of the Leave vote in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and anti Welsh-language speakers are the core of the leave vote in South Wales.

The Tories lost their all-UK status, when the UUP finally broke with the party in two stages over Sunningdale and the Anglo-Irish Agreement, but UKIP managed to recreate an all-UK reactionary unionism, with representation at Westminster, two of its devolved assemblies, Brussels and many local councils. With the Tories having appropriated UKIP’s Brexit agenda, May’s alliance with the reactionary unionist DUP now plays the same role.

I would also draw a distinction between Left Brexiters like the CPB and trade union bureaucrats, e.g Len McLuskey on one had, who support the fiction of non-racist immigration controls and Lexiteers like the SWP and their various spin-offs on the other hand, who oppose migration controls on paper, but tend to drop this demand whenever they join an organisation where upholding this principle might cause them problems, e.g. in Respect

__________________

3. Phil Vellender posted the following article from The New Statesman, 29.1.19

THE IMMIGRATION BILL FIASCO SHOWS THAT LABOUR’S LEFT-WING PRINCIPLES ARE ON THE SLIDE

The Corbyn project needs to face down anti-immigration narratives, not triangulate against them.

On 21 July 2015 Harriet Harman, then acting Labour leader, whipped the party to abstain on the second reading of the Welfare Bill. It became the turning point of the ongoing leadership election. Andy Burnham argued that the bill would “penalise working families and increase child poverty”, but then still abstained. So did Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall. Only Jeremy Corbyn stood firm with 47 other Labour MPs and voted against the Tories’ benefit cuts. The old Labour establishment thought it was being canny and “sending a message” to the electorate; but in the voting lobbies that night it was breathing its last breath.

Last night, the Corbyn project narrowly avoided the same fate. Having opposed every line of the government’s Immigration Bill, Labour was set to abstain on it. At the last minute, the front bench U-turned to oppose the bill, though with only a one-line whip. The result was a government majority of 63, with 78 Labour MPs absent and, probably, a number of Tories holding back from rebellion on the basis that Labour wasn’t going to show up properly.

One of the big lessons of the Immigration Bill fiasco, from the perspective of the Labour grassroots, is the power of members and moral pressure. The sudden switch in the Labour whip was driven by a storm of online outrage, internal fighting from various MPs, and a flurry of desperate private lobbying from anti-Brexit and pro-free movement activists. Those of us who will rely on Labour to one day whip in favour of a new Brexit referendum should take heart, if not confidence.

How did this happen? There are all kinds of “clever” arguments to abstain. Was Labour just trying to hide the numbers and force the Tories to negotiate over amendments? Was this about trying to end indefinite detention? (Well no, because there is nothing to stop you from whipping against and then amending later anyway.)

The truth is that core parts of Labour’s principled left-wing offer under Jeremy Corbyn are now on the slide, driven by a mixture of triangulation towards right wing arguments against free movement on one hand, and Westminster bubble syndrome on the other.

Among some parts of the Labour leadership, there is now an ingrained obsession with needing to “deliver Brexit” and be seen to do so. Against the weight of party members and Labour voters, who overwhelmingly now want a new referendum, a small group of politicians and strategists are briefing incessantlythe other way, seeking to construct a narrative that Labour might lose front benchers if it follows through on its own policy. Last night, the same tendency tried to use the Immigration Bill to “send a message” to voters that Labour would deliver the end of free movement. The thundering condemnation of the grassroots held them back.

All of the left-wing party activists who were outraged at the possibility of Labour abstaining on the Immigration Bill now need to take a long, hard look at where we are headed. What we are witnessing is a race to the bottom – both in terms of the rights of migrants in the wake of Brexit, and in terms of the left’s principles. The most radical Labour leadership since George Lansbury is standing aside from crucial questions of principle that Corbyn would have died in a ditch over just a few years ago. Unless its supporters wake up to that fact, we will lose.

Brexit has cut deep divisions across British politics, including on the left. But what we need now is radicalism: the determination to reject right wing narratives on nationalism, immigration and “the will of the people”, and put forward real solutions to Britain’s social crisis instead. Corbyn’s Labour will not get through this moment with its activists on board and its soul intact, by triangulating in the hope that difficult issues will just go away. That is, after all, what Harriet Harman was trying to do in 2015. And look where that got her.

A response to The New Statesman article from Sue Sparks on Phil Vellender’s blog, 29.1.19

Excellent piece which makes the point that a radical Labour government would face similar problems over a number of other key issues like crime and defence. So it’s not just Brexit and immigration, it’s in other areas too where electoral calculation dictates caution in direct contradiction to what Corbynism is supposed to be about. It illustrates the problem that in reality Corbynism is very much a minority perspective which has fooled itself into imagining it represents the majority.

It possibly could do so but only if it fights for these unpopular positions, including being pro immigration, and every fibre of its electoral instinct cries out against arguing with the electorate.’

“But as the chaos sparked on Monday night by the Immigration Bill shows, despite all the talk of Brexit being caused first and foremost by economic deprivation, the leadership clearly interprets the vote to leave the European Union as a public call to strengthen border controls. That brings us uncomfortably close to the logic followed by the Prime Minister.

At the second reading of the Immigration Bill last night, Diane Abbott stood at the despatch box and told the House of Commons that Labour had decided not to oppose the bill because the party was committed to ending free movement of people, as it pledged to do in 2017. Although Diane went on to criticise many aspects of the Immigration White Paper in her speech, the underlying argument was consistent with that of Conservative members sitting on the opposing side of the chamber: respecting the Brexit vote means controlling immigration and strengthening borders.

This is a disappointing statement from a left-wing Labour Party – and in particular from Diane Abbott, a life-long champion of migrants’ rights. It has exposed once more one of the fundamental problems of Corbynism: as the leadership prepares for a general election, former radicals turn to triangulation to appease what they think the electorate wants. This is understandable, given the significant pressures on Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and John McDonnell at the helm of a mass party such as Labour. But these pressures will only intensify if we ever make it into Number 10.

There is only one way to tackle this challenge. We must politicise the movement behind Corbyn, finally break away from the ‘loyalist’ approach that says the leadership can do no wrong, and argue within society and the party for what is right. After all, if we don’t buy into our own progressive ideas, why would the general public?”

Response to Sue Sparks from Allan Armstrong, 29.1.19

I think Sue has got to the essence of any viable socialist strategy in England, which wishes to relate to those many thousands who joined up when Corbyn stood for leadership of the Labour Party. It must abandon a Corbyn loyalist stance and develop its own independent politics.

I remember AWL-leaning Michael Chessum speaking at the Another Europe Is Possible (AEIP) meeting in London on 8th December, criticising the SWP’s and SP’s cynical support for Lexit. He said that they had adopted this stance so they could cosy up to Corbyn. Then I looked around the conference, and saw all those ‘Love Corbyn, Hate Brexit’ T-shirts! Which only goes to show that in jumping on to the Jeremy-idolising bandwagon, the AEIP leaders have even greater illusions in Corbyn. The SWP and SP are at least more in tune with the specific politics of Corbyn’s entrenched ‘British social democratic road to socialism’, buttressed by the CPB, and more significantly by sections of the trade union bureaucracy led by Len McCluskey. . The AEIP’s leaders seem to think that their Left own social democratic politics offers some sort of alternative, and Corbyn can be persuaded to change his political spots.

To justify this, the AWL attribute Corbyn’s politics to the influence of a small stalinist clique, when in reality they both draw upon the longstanding ‘British road to socialism’ tradition established in Hyndman’s SDP and transferred to the CPGB and most dissident communists, whether maoist or trotskyist. The AWL’s social unionist stance on Ireland (pro-Loyalist) preceded their social imperialist pro-Zionism. They have called their front organisation within the Labour Party – Clarion. This was the name given to Robert Blatchford’s paper before the First World War. He went on to give his support to that war. Blatchford also wrote England for the English, and later Britain for the British. And the AWL take Clarion as an inspiration for their politics!

Corbyn’s and Abbot’s miserable role over May’s Immigration Bill highlights the need to adopt a politics independent of both advocates of a ‘British social democratic road to socialism’. The next step that any independent-minded socialist grouping in the Labour Party needs to take, is to recognise the anti-democratic nature of the UK’s unionist state, with its Crown Powers and subservience to the City. This requires a political leap to a socialist republican, ‘internationalism from below’ politics, which understands the political situation in Scotland, Ireland And Wales, as well as England.

The AWL, which seems to want the AEIP as a front organisation for its own social unionist and social imperialist politics, is the least able to understand this. The SWP and SP largely left IndyRef1 to their local Scottish branches (SWP) or their SPS satellite (SP). They organised no real international solidarity in England. That has left rumblings of dissent amongst some of their members. The very best support in England at the time of IndyRef1 came from those, like yourself {Phil Vallender}, who organised practical support in England (and also in Wales and Ireland). I was very gratified that you were able to get The Chartist to publish my republican analysis of the situation. The work done by those who provided such practical support means they can now factor the political situations in Scotland, Ireland and Wales into their wider analysis. The AWL, though, was as Unionist over IndyRef1 as George Galloway or the Red Paper Collective. But whereas these two’s politics are informed by a specific Left Scottish unionism, the AWL’s social unionist politics often seems to represent little more a combination of Little Englanderism and London metropolitan ignorance.

____________

4. Statement from Joe Healy on the Left Unity blog, 30.1.19

My statement on Labour and the Immigration Bill. Please spread widely – it is also on LU Twitter account. Many people now disillusioned with Labour. We need to get the word out that we have a very different stance!

“The confusion and abject failure of the Labour Party in opposing the Immigration Bill is a disgrace and indicates a real failure on the part of Labour to support EU citizens living here who are already victims of the hostile environment culture. Furthermore the Bill, by removing freedom of movement, one of the cornerstones of any progressive policy on migration, toys with the fantasy of Fortress Britain, with its drawbridge firmly shut. Labour should have opposed this Bill tooth and nail and indicated its support both for the rights of young people in this country to free movement, the rights of EU citizens living here and an open and progressive policy on migration. By first instructing its MPs to abstain and then later only imposing a line whip it has responded to the worst instincts of some of its MPs and the Lexiteer faction in the party.

Left Unity calls for the continuation and defence of the right to free movement of all in the UK and for the protection of the rights of EU citizens living here. We will continue to resist the hostile environment created by this government both legislatively and in the streets where Brexit has led to an explosion of hate crime and xenophobia.”

Joseph Healy, Principal Speaker

Response from Allan Armstrong to Joe Healy’s statement. 30.1.19

It’s a pity Left Unity were so quiet at the Another Europe Is Possible conference, which was dominated by Love Corbyn/Hate Brexit sentiment, and the Left British unionism of the AWL. As I have written earlier, the SWP and SP have a more accurate understanding of the Left chauvinism of Corbyn, and have hence adopted positions which allow them to cuddle much closer to him than the AEIP. Despite the fact that the AWL is even more British chauvinist (and in their case also social unionist) than the SWP and SP, does not disguise the fact that Brexit was always going to be part of Corbyn’s DNA. And from this Corbyn’s and Abbott’s stance on the Immigration Bill flows quite naturally.

________________

5. A reply from ‘Resist’ to a Brexiteer troll claiming that the 2016 Referendum was democratic, posted on Phi Vellender’s Facebook, 30.1.19

“The first part of your post is perfectly accurate. Yes, the electorate voted in Cameron’s government with a mandate to hold a referendum. But that’s where your analysis starts to break down. The fact that he was right to call a referendum does not mean that the subsequent attempt was legal, binding or democratic. We are still waiting for that referendum.

First, Cameron stated on the ballot paperwork that the result would be implemented but the Parliamentary Act stated it was ‘advisory’ which gave some of the electorate the impression that it may not be implemented.

Second, he allowed serving Cabinet members (Gove & Johnson) to make public claims that he knew were not accurate. The £350m per week claim was implied on the side of the campaign bus and stated explicitly on door to door leaflets throughout the country. His lack of censure was regarded by many as support for the legitimacy of the claims.

Third, under his watch, the referendum was conducted with significant overspending by at least one side with compelling evidence of Russian funding to use illegal social media targetting.

Fourth, and most importantly, any referendum requires choice. It is not enough to ask ‘vote for x or vote not for x’. You must state what ‘not for x’ means, in other words, what ‘y’ is. Not doing so allowed many different interpretations of what ‘y’ meant. You wouldn’t have a general election that asked ‘vote for the conservatives or not for the conservatives’.

The fact that so many people have differing views on what ‘leave’ meant, fuelled by various statements over time such as Boris saying we’d be mad to leave the single market, Davis claiming the deal would be the easiest in history, and Mogg playing fast and loose with the serious implications of a hard border in Ireland – reneging on the Good Friday Agreement and risking the entire peace process, all of these conflicting opinions were only allowed to circulate because Cameron failed to state what voting ‘y’ actually meant.

We should still have a Brexit referendum but the leave proposition should be agreed beforehand by the Leave side (not a Remainer) it should be singular and it should be open to scrutiny. Two choices should be given (x or y) vote to remain or leave on these terms (even if the Leave side declare they want a No Deal Brexit).

If we hold such a referendum, the public could get behind whatever the result would be – that is what should happen in a democracy.”

A Response to ‘Resist’ from Allan Armstrong, 30.1.19

It’s interesting that this (English-based?) commentator misses out the most significant reason why the Brexit referendum was not democratic- it excluded EU residents and 16-18 year olds. Yet both Cameron and May laid down this franchise for IndyRef1.

_________

6. Robert Peston, What Corbyn’s meeting with May reveals about Labour’s Brexit plan in

Almost more interesting than what Corbyn and the PM said to each other this afternoon was who accompanied the Labour leader to the meeting.

He was joined by his chief of staff Karie Murphy and his director of strategy Seumas Milne (as well as the chief whip Nick Brown) but not by his Brexit secretary Keir Starmer.

Why does that matter?

In the battle over whether Labour should ever back a Brexit referendum or People’s Vote, Murphy and Milne are implacably opposed, and Starmer is battling to keep that option alive.

So it matters that in choosing to explain what kind of Brexit deal Labour would support, Corbyn was accompanied by the two influential aides who are convinced that Labour should deliver Brexit and not ask the views of the people again.

This was a signal, his colleagues say, of Corbyn’s own clear preference to avoid another referendum.

What also matters is that Corbyn felt – I am told – that the meeting was more than a going through the motions, that the Prime Minister genuinely listened and probed, as he and his colleagues outlined their plan for membership of the customs union, partial membership of the EU’s single market, and further protections for workers’ rights.

In terms of the technical nitty gritty, Corbyn and team said they wanted dynamic alignment with the EU on employment regulations – as opposed to the standstill written into the so-called backstop – and non-regression or a standstill on state aid rules.

This seems to me all of a piece with a pincer movement by Milne and Murphy with Len McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite union, to try to engineer a Brexit deal before 29 March that Labour could officially fall in behind – since McCluskey too, who is close to Corbyn, is set against a referendum.

McCluskey, for example, on Monday met the business secretary Greg Clark – who as it happens is on my show tonight – to discuss legislation to protect and extend workers’ right after Brexit.

And tomorrow more junior officials from Unite, the TUC, the GMB and Unison will meet Sarah Healey, the director of economic and domestic affairs at the Cabinet Office and Chris Thompson from the business department to take the agenda forward on what the government can do to secure trade union support for Brexit.

For what it’s worth, my understanding is that Corbyn sees the failure to secure a majority yesterday of the Cooper and Grieve motions – and Labour’s own one, which explicitly mentions the possibility of a referendum – as proof that MPs really don’t want a People’s Vote.

Even more striking is that those close to Labour’s leader tell me they can indeed envisage a moment in the coming weeks when it will be official Labour policy to vote for a Brexit plan.

Those at the top of Labour, and in the grassroots, who want a referendum should fear they are being properly outmanoeuvred.’

A response from Allan Armstrong on the Republican Socialist Alliance List, 20.1.19

Yes, this is a good article. The only link it misses is that Karie Murphy is Len McCluskey’s partner. He sacrificed the whole INEOS workforce at Grangemouth to manouevre her into a Labour candidacy.

I asked yesterday if Labour could stoop even lower. The answer was provided last night when May got through an even harder Brexit, with extremely damaging implications for Ireland (and of course the wider working class), thanks to the support of Labour’s UKIP-Lite wing, including Corbyn Labour leader nominator, Kate Hoey.

The idea that by facilitating Brexit, (and constantly appeasing the Right, whether over Israel and refusing to support the deselection of neo-Blairtites) Labour can then win the next election seems unbelievably short-sighted to me. If May can get Brexit through, in whatever form in March, she will be able to fight the election on her ‘achievement’, portraying Corbyn as a vacillator, only ever raising nit-picking points, and unlike May, having no plan of his own. Brexit and immigration are likely to be the main topics of the next election, and in the battle to see who is harder on these. May’s steely determination and open racist record, in the Home Office, will win over Labour vacillation, even if Corbyn reproduces Miliband’s notorious mug, Controls on Immigration, with his own face on it (and I’m now only half joking on that!)

If May gets away with this, and I’m still waiting to see the British ruling class, which the Lexiters claimed are opposed to Brexit, make their move, she could well be resurrected as Tory heroine, She has been the subject of much scorn by both the liberal and socialist media, but in her assessment of the powers given to the Right by the UK state, she is a lot more astute than Corbyn, who is completely blind to this. Of course, the hardest Brexiters will still not be satisfied with a No Brexit or May-type Brexit deal, but there would be a better chance of the Tory party holding together, with these two wings of the party continuing their symbiotic relationship, and moving politics ever further to the Right, than the Labour Party, if, as seems increasingly likely ,it loses the next election.

Eric Thomas Chester, is author of The Wobblies in Their Heyday (a history of the Industrial Workers of the World during its most vibrant period, the World War I era ) and Yours for Industrial Freedom (an anthology that provides insight into the IWW as it really was based on letters introduced by the prosecution during the 1918 Chicago conspiracy trial). Here he writes on the period of Wobbly actovity during and immediately after the First World War.

REMEMBERING THR WOBBLIES

Mass meeting of IWW members at Bisbee in Arizona in September 1918

A little more than a hundred years ago, in September 1918, more than a hundred leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World were convicted of conspiracy to obstruct World War I. The trial marked a critical turning point for the union and the Left in the United States. In marking this centenary, we remember the Industrial Workers of the World as a grass-roots, militant organisation with a radical vision of an alternative society.

Founded in 1905, the IWW initially struggled to consolidate a base of support within working class communities. World War I changed the context within which the union organised. The global conflict led to an economic boom, as the United States produced a vast supply of the resources needed for the war effort. In April 1917, the United States entered the war and, soon after, the government began conscripting men into the army. The war and the draft were extremely unpopular, especially in the western states where the IWW was most active.

Union membership rocketed, as the IWW’s membership grew from 15,000 to 150,000. By the summer of 1917, timber workers in the Pacific Northwest and copper miners in Arizona had organised effective, militant strikes in the spring and summer of 1917.

The strike of timber workers began in northwestern Montana in April 1917. It quickly spread throughout the Pacific Northwest as thousands of lumberjacks quit work and brought production to a standstill. Many of the demands related to the miserable conditions in the timber camps, but there were also calls for an eight hour day and a union hall for new hires. The strike was remarkably effective. Union leaders insisted that those on picket lines had to be disciplined and non-violent. Strikers were urged to avoid alcohol, a major problem among timber workers.

From the start, authorities were intent on breaking the strike. At the behest of Montana’s governor, President Woodrow Wilson dispatched troops to the first camps on strike. Soon soldiers were detaining IWW activists, holding them for an indefinite period without specifying charges. As the strike spread, the military began widening the scope of detentions. A person who merely joined a picket line could be detained for weeks in a makeshift bullpen, where food was scarce and sanitation minimal. In August 1917, James Rowan, the secretary of the Lumber Workers’ Industrial Union #500, called for a general strike throughout the region. He and the other union leaders were detained by soldiers and the strike finally collapsed.

The use of troops to crush picket lines and detain hundreds of peaceful strikers for weeks on end represented a serious threat to fundamental rights. These were actions taken without even a facade of legality by a government dependent on military force.

As impressive as the strike of timber workers was, the strike of copper miners had an even greater impact. Copper was an essential component in the production of munitions. In the early summer of 1917, the Metal Mine Workers’ Union #800 organised miners in camps around Arizona, the most important of which was in Bisbee. A key point in the organising drive was the call for a six hour day. This demand was seen as a way of bridging the vision of a future society with the immediate needs of the miners.

On June 27, 1917, the Bisbee branch went on strike, with other camps in the state soon joining the strike. In addition to demands related to health and safety, the union called for a substantial increase in the pay of topmen who hauled the ore that had been brought to the surface. Most were recent immigrants from Mexico and were paid substantially less than the miners.

Once again, the strike was disciplined and non-violent. Every day, mass rallies were held where IWW speakers presented the basics of the class struggle and the need to build a new cooperative society. Union leaders also stressed that the six hour day would be placed on the table once the current strike was won.

On July 12, 1917, unable to break the unity of the miners, an armed vigilante gang organised by the copper corporations rounded up two thousand strikers at gun point. Strikers were forced on to crammed cattle cars and dumped in the desert hundreds of miles from Bisbee. For months, Bisbee remained under vigilante rule. Those deported were taken to a military base in Columbus, New Mexico, before being slowly released.

The Bisbee strike and deportation caused widespread consternation in corporate circles. Governors in the western states denounced the IWW as a threat that had grown beyond the capability of the states to suppress. Shortly after the deportation, President Wilson decided that the union had to be crushed.

Once this decision was made, the federal government implemented a coordinated attack on the IWW, with a blatant disregard for fundamental human rights. Wobbly newspapers were suppressed, union halls were raided and documents were indiscriminately seized. The Justice Department prosecuted union activists in three different show trials. In the most important trial, held in Chicago, nearly 100 union leaders, including Big Bill Haywood, the IWW’s general secretary, were convicted of violating the Espionage Act and served lengthy sentences in a high security federal penitentiary.

The IWW was not prepared to cope with this onslaught. Membership plummeted, as the union devoted its resources to defending itself from government repression. Even after the war ended, the union was barely able to sustain itself. In 1924, the IWW underwent a bitter split rooted in personal and political divisions that had arisen earlier during the government’s assault on the union. Only in the 1960s did a new generation of radicals revive the IWW. The current day IWW continues to organise those stuck in the gig economy.

The experience of the IWW provides many positive models for the Left a hundred years later. Wobblies downplayed the importance of electoral activity, instead focusing their energies on organising disciplined non-violent direct action. At the same time, the IWW condemned the mainstream unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labour for their close ties to the Democratic Party, a problem that continues to this day.

The IWW also had a holistic vision of its role as a radical union. It did not concentrate exclusively on workplace organising, but rather it opposed militarism, imperialism and racism. In December 1916, the IWW’s general convention approved a resolution calling for a general strike should the United States enter the war. Once war was declared, most of the union’s leaders decided to shelve opposition to the war and instead to concentrate on workplace organising. Nevertheless, IWW activists at the grass-roots level joined with radicals within the Socialist Party to hold protests and circulate literature, in spite of the government’s ruthless repression of dissent.

Furthermore, the importance the Wobblies gave to the development of an alternative culture is an exemplary lesson to contemporary radicals. Cartoons, poems and songs spoke to common themes and helped create a viable alternative space for those in conflict with the corporate mainstream. Joe Hill’s sarcastic parodies of popular ditties and Salvation Army hymns remain popular to this day. Hill also tried to persuade the IWW to bring more women into its ranks and to encourage more women to become leaders.

Finally, the trampling of civil liberties by the administration of Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, shows that we cannot rely on liberal politicians to defend basic rights. Nor can we rely on the judicial system, whatever its political complexion. Only an aroused populace can protect the right to dissent from government attacks.

Both books are available from Central Distributors.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/25/remembering-the-wobblies/feed/0REVIEW: CLASS NOT CREED, 1968http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/22/review-class-not-creed-1968-2/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/22/review-class-not-creed-1968-2/#respondTue, 22 Jan 2019 21:29:44 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12792Connor Beaton reviews the pamphlet Class Not Creed, 1968 by Richie Venton both as a historic account of events in Northern Ireland and as an indication of the current politics of the Scottish Socialist Party.

Fifty years after the beginning of the civil rights movement in the north of Ireland, the whole island is coming alive with mass political activity. Campaigns against water charges, against sexual violence, for abortion law reform, for marriage equality, and for affordable housing have spilled onto the streets in virtually every major city in Ireland over the past five years. Protests in the south have consistently mobilised tens of thousands of people, particularly young people and women, and demonstrations have also taken place north of the border in a more limited way. Meanwhile, the Brexit vote in 2016 and the collapse of Stormont at the start of 2017 have precipitated a political crisis in the north, making partition a central political issue in perhaps the most serious way since the Good Friday Agreement was concluded in 1998.

Against this political backdrop, a critical examination of the civil rights movement launched in 1968 could not be any more relevant. It is useful that Fermanagh-born Richie Venton, the Scottish Socialist Party’d national trade union organiser, has helped to open the space for this in Scotland with the publication of his latest pamphlet, Class Not Creed, 1968: Ireland’s lost opportunity for socialism, not sectarianism. It has already shifted hundreds of copies, according to Richie, and has been used as the basis for discussions at SSP branch meetings.

The 18 page pamphlet is not a new work, but rather the republication of the opening to Socialism– Not Sectarianism: Labour & Northern Ireland Politics 20 Years On, which Richie co-wrote in 1989 with Peter Hadden, the late leading light of the Militant tendency in the north of Ireland. Richie, a teenager at the time of the civil rights movement, was by 1989 a key organiser for the Militant tendency in Liverpool. Therefore, the pamphlet repeatedly references the arguments advanced by the Militant newspaper while the civil rights movement was underway, even though it had only a “tiny” following in Ireland; this partly obscures the political reality in which the mass movement existed, and the political forces which drove it forward and influenced, to varying degrees, its collective decision-making. It presents events through one narrow, partisan lens. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with that – as long as readers know what to expect.

Irish workers’ struggle

Richie opens the pamphlet with a brief primer on the workers’ movement in 20th century Ireland. “Under the shadow of the 1917 Russian revolution,” he writes, “the capitalists faced a mobilised Irish working class in 1918-21.”1 This peculiar framing implicitly plays down the significance of Easter Rising in Dublin just two years previously, which took place with the participation of armed trade unionists in the Irish Citizen Army. (The Russian revolutionaries themselves were among the harshest critics of those who distanced themselves from the rising and played down its significance; Lenin famously chided them in July 1916: “Whoever expects a ‘pure’ social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip-service to revolution without understanding what revolution is.”2)

It is particularly unfortunate that, by doing this, Richie erases one of the most immediate Scottish links to the Irish workers’ struggle: James Connolly, the Edinburgh-born trade unionist and leader of the Irish Citizen Army. It is a failing on the part of the Scottish Socialist Party that it fails to mention him once in its first pamphlet on Ireland in at least several years, published in Connolly’s 150th birthday year (just months after the Connolly150 conference, chaired in part by Róisin McLaren, who has since been elected the SSP’s joint national spokesperson). If we are generous and assume the exclusion was not a political slight, this instead highlights one of the shortcomings of republishing, without introduction or context, a text written for a different time and purpose than best serves the SSP in 2018.

Britain’s interest in Ireland

Richie contends that, by the 1960s, the “outlook of the British ruling class towards Ireland” had changed due to the decline of the northern economy and the opening up of the southern economy to foreign (especially British) investment. The British ruling class “began to look upon the border and the sectarian monster of their own creation as nightmarish obstacles” to their new preference for “some form of unified capitalist Ireland”.3 Later in the pamphlet, he argues that the British ruling class “favoured piecemeal reform” in the north, but “had created state forces in the RUC and the B Specials (Ulster Special Constabulary) beyond their immediate control”;4 in his conclusion, he argues that British capitalism in 1989 was “happy with the prospect of a united Ireland”.5

This understanding of events essentially relegates the role of the British ruling class, and by extension the British state, in Ireland to a purely passive one. Rather than working in tandem with northern unionists and deliberately provoking loyalist reaction to secure its interests in Ireland, the British state in the late 20th century was instead beholden to unionism and loyalism, thwarted in its new ambition of Irish reunification on capitalist terms.

To back up this argument, Richie points to the landmark 1965 trade talks between liberal unionist Northern Ireland Prime Minister Terence O’Neill and his southern counterpart, Taoiseach Seán Lemass. But here, Richie overstates their significance and their intent; Cabinet documents released in 1998 reveal that even O’Neill’s predecessor, the hardline anti-Catholic bigot Basil Brooke, supported the talks, writing: “I do not think either the constitution or Protestantism is threatened in any way.”6 The talks were ‘symbolic’, as Richie says, only in the sense that even hardline Ulster unionists did not feel threatened by them.

In order to believe that the British ruling class had by 1968 become a passive actor in Ireland, we have to accept, firstly, that the British ruling class had no continuing economic, political or military stake in maintaining partition and, secondly, that it therefore maintained partition for some other reason.

Richie observes of the economy in the southern Irish state: “From 1958 the Southern capitalist government sought … closer integration with imperialism, throwing the doors open to foreign investment. By the ’70s, two-thirds of the 100 largest companies in the South were wholly or partly British owned. Over half the South’s imports and 70% of exports were with Britain.”7 The British ruling class, then, were very capable of extracting profit from the southern state without need for further constitutional upheaval. Richie also acknowledges that this turn to foreign investment was driven by the southern state’s inability to develop “a healthy, independent economy”, which he correctly identifies as a direct consequence of partition.

Alongside this, the northern statelet provided the British state with a strategic military outpost on the island (particularly crucial in the context of both the Cold War and NATO’s latter-day expansionism, considering the southern state’s official military neutrality) and kept the boot of sectarianism on the neck of the Irish working class on both sides of the border. Richie accepts that the partitioning of Ireland “threw back the workers’ movement for decades”, but fails to explain why he felt partition did not continue to serve that purpose in the 1960s. Far from being an obstacle, the economic evidence cited by Richie suggests that partition was continuing to handsomely reward the British ruling class with the continued economic subjugation of the southern state, a strategic foothold in the north, and a marginalised and divided working class on both sides of the border.

Besides these benefits of partition, the British ruling class have always been keenly aware of the consequences of withdrawing from Ireland. Richie touches on this briefly, but only “the prospect of sectarian civil war, with all the damage it could mean to industry and investment”. The stakes may well have been higher. Having lost a great deal of authority in the Suez Crisis in 1956, as well as all of its colonial possessions in Africa by 1968, the British Empire was in a long period of decline. However, Britain was far from acquiscent to the process; its costly military ventures in Malaya, Kenya and the Falklands are testament to that. As in 1916, when the Easter Rising shook the Empire to its core, the prospect of losing its foothold in its first colony threatened to deal a devastating blow to an increasingly defensive British imperialism. By the 1970s, with modern Scottish nationalism also gathering momentum, the total unravelling of the British state, ending Britain’s status as a world power, was not an unrealistic prospect.

The extreme paranoia of part of the British ruling class towards the prospect of a united Ireland was articulated by Jim Prior, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, when he privately told Conservative MPs in 1983 that Ireland could become a “Cuba off Britain’s west coast”8 in terms of its threat to British interests. In terms of Ireland’s political trajectory, Richie acknowledges that British capitalists “were not entirely confident of the outcome if sectarian civil strife were to go unchecked, with the growth of socialist movements within the civil rights movement and an insurrection by the workers of the Bogside”.9 It is difficult to reconcile this assessment with the suggestion that the British ruling class were warming to Irish unity.

Members of Socialist Democracy, a Trotskyist organisation that traces its own history to the civil rights movement, have concluded persuasively: “Partition is fundamentally necessary to maintenance of a stable political framework for Ireland guaranteeing the safety of capitalism on the island. Defeat for Britain, or even voluntary withdrawal, would threaten this and also the stability of the capitalist state in Britain itself. At the very least it would fatally weaken the most reactionary and sectarian institutions and organisations in the north and remove the key mechanism for dividing the Irish working class, thus opening the prospect of real political worker’s unity.”10

The civil rights movement itself

On the civil rights movement itself, Richie’s principal criticism is that the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) did not advance a socialist programme, and instead had “restricted their demands in effect to an equalisation of unemployment and slum housing, within a democratised, capitalist Northern Ireland”.11 He argues that the civil rights movement should have made an appeal to Protestant workers on the basis of class. This is undoubtedly correct, but Richie likely overstates the success of such a move.

Writing in 1972, Eamonn McCann, the future People Before Profit MLA and previously a key organiser of the Derry Housing Action Committee (which Richie commends for campaigning “alongside Protestant tenants in the Fountain district as well as with Catholic tenants”12), shares Richie’s regret that not enough was done to build class solidarity between Protestant and Catholic workers. However, he suggests more realistically that the civil rights movement could have built “some tenuous links with militant Protestant workers”, rather than instigated a “mass deflection from the ‘loyalist’ camp”.13 Richie attempts to play down the extent to which Protestant workers were privileged over their Catholic counterparts by highlighting the poor conditions in Protestant working class communities like the Shankill. This ultimately minimises the degree to which the militancy of the Catholic population was drawn directly from material discrimination and the degree to which the base for loyalism was drawn from the relative privilege of the Protestant population, creating a gap which cross-community slogans alone would not be able to bridge.

In terms of the content of a socialist programme, Richie proposes “a minimum wage, a massive building programme and a socialist planned economy that could ensure decent conditions for all with no discrimination”. He assigns little importance to the issue of partition, perhaps reflecting an impulse on certain sections of the left to focus narrowly on bread-and-butter issues at the expense of developing a wider institutional challenge to the state and the ruling class. This means that while Richie places himself in opposition to reformist currents within NICRA, he inadvertently leaves unchallenged the illusion peddled by those forces that the northern statelet can be reformed; centring a class analysis of partition in a socialist programme is equally necessary to challenge both reformism and left nationalism.

Richie goes on to argue that the vehicles best placed to advance this socialist programme would have been the Labour Party in the south, the Northern Ireland Labour Party in the north, and the all-island trade union movement. In support of this, he points to the apparent leftward shift of the Labour Party in the south in the late 1960s, neglecting to mention that same party, under the same leadership, forming a coalition in 1973 with Fine Gael, who Richie himself describes as “the Tory party whose origins are in the fascist Blueshirt movement of the 1930s”.14 He notes the electoral success of the NILP and its positive role in the civil rights movement, but shies away from making a serious analysis of how it failed to make itself relevant in the years that followed, especially as partition became a more significant political issue; likewise, the nature of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and the reason why it became the southern Labour Party’s sister organisation in the north is not subjected to serious scrutiny.

It is particularly interesting to note that Richie was writing his defence of the Labour Parties, north and south, just as the Militant tendency was questioning its long-standing commitment to entryism. By the end of 1989, the Irish section of the Militant tendency had abandoned the Labour Party in the south in favour of setting up what is now known as the Socialist Party, effectively disowning the very tactic which Richie continues to defend in a pamphlet re-published three decades later.

Debate and scrutiny

Besides the content of Richie’s pamphlet, it is concerning that it came to be published in the name of the Scottish Socialist Party without reference to the party’s official position on Ireland. This was similarly the case with Richie’s previous pamphlet on the Russian Revolution, 1917: Walls Come Tumbling Down (also a republication of an earlier text, this time one from 2001 or thereabouts). The 1917 pamphlet was published without being presented to the SSP’s executive committee for approval, never mind the SSP membership.

It is possible (though tenuous) to argue that the decision to publish 1917 was at least in line with the motion passed at the SSP’s 2016 conference instructing the party to “explain the truth about the Bolsheviks to the wider public” while making clear “the Stalinist degradation”, but the SSP conference has not discussed Ireland for more than a fleeting moment in years. The publication of 1917 was followed by a gently critical review in the Scottish Socialist Voice by the paper’s editor, Ken Ferguson (who has a different approach to the Russian Revolution, drawn from his background in the Communist Party of Great Britain), but no similar critique of Class Not Creed, 1968 has appeared. For all intents and purposes, the content of the pamphlet appears to outsiders to represent the official position of the SSP.

This does a disservice to SSP members who could reasonably expect the opportunity to pick apart a subject of considerable complexity and importance (not least to the Irish community in Scotland), rather to have one point of view imposed on them, particularly in a pamphlet which peppers its arguments with hostility towards other left traditions on Ireland; Richie variously accuses left republicans of “ignorant assertions” and uses Tony Benn’s diaries to lay at least partial blame at Bernadette Devlin’s feet for the Labour government’s deployment of troops to the north of Ireland.

With the British ruling class now in a period of sustained crisis as the UK’s exit from the European Union looms, there is an urgent need for the Scottish left to grapple seriously with major strategic questions, some of which also challenged the civil rights movement in 1968, and to identify the pressure points that can deliver advance for the working class. Building links with appropriate forces in the north of Ireland, based on a socialist analysis of the situation there, could be particularly useful. In other words, our understanding of the British state and its interests could prove crucial to intervening effectively in the months to come. Though it is smaller and less influential now than perhaps at any other point in its history, the SSP remains the most significant organised pro-independence grouping to the left of the Greens. With all due respect to the author, the SSP can and must make better contributions than this.

Connor Beaton is a former member (2012-18) and national secretary (2017-18) of the Scottish Socialist Party. He works as a journalist focussing on Irish legal affairs.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/22/review-class-not-creed-1968-2/feed/0THE IRISH STATE, THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE NEW ABORTION LAWhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/22/12783/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/22/12783/#respondTue, 22 Jan 2019 21:08:45 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12783Socialist Democracy (Ireland) provides a further two articles outlining the continued resistance of the Right and Catholic Church to women’s rights in the aftermath of the historic victory over the Eight Amendment.

1. NEW IRISH ABORTION LAW

A 350 million euro hospital for the nuns, 14 years jail time for those who exercise the right to choose

The Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy Bill passed through the Irish Dail just before midnight on 5th December. The debate involved an ill-tempered confrontation between left and right, but this debate was on marginal issues rather than on the substance of the bill. A transparent wrecking attempt by the right around data collection and conscientious objection rights for anti-abortion medical personnel failed and the government proposals were passed with minimal changes.

At one level the referendum and the passing of the Bill are historic moments in Irish history. Socialist TDs have been self-congratulatory about what has been achieved and their role in the referendum campaign. However the bill’s passage has been met with a certain level of disquiet. It has become evident to activists that abortion rights remain heavily restricted, that many issues will have to be fought again in the state structures and in the medical services and that the idea that the link between church and state in Ireland had been broken has proved to be mistaken.

A decision was made early on in the Repeal campaign to limit the issue to repeal alone. The intention was to ensure the broadest possible unity, but the outcome was to leave legislation to the right wing government and the Dail – hostile environments for women’s rights.

In the event the legislation is quite restrictive.

The main promise was that there would be essentially abortion on demand in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, but to exercise this right the woman must receive certification from a doctor and then must have the procedure carried out within three days.

After 12 weeks conditions are very restrictive: abortion is allowed on the basis of fatal foetal abnormality or where there is a risk to the life, or of serious harm to the health, of the pregnant woman. Worryingly this process is only available where the foetus is not deemed viable. We have already had cases where “termination” was interpreted as forcing the woman to give birth. As in the past there will be a panel of doctors, now reduced to two and a cumbersome appeal process.

Just to underline how restrictive the process is meant to be, punitive criminal sanctions of up to 14 years jail are retained in the legislation for anyone procuring an abortion outside the terms of the Act.

At protest meetings outside the Dail during the passage of the legislation congratulatory speeches by the socialist groups centred around the assertion that it was only because of the mobilisation around repeal that this legislation is going through: “We forced them to this point”.

But limits placed on the mobilisation around repeal means that the government is not under any pressure from a mass movement. There was no continuity after the repeal campaign. It was disbanded and the issue went back to the Dail, an arena where historically women’s rights are trampled on rather than vindicated.

The mobilisation and enthusiastic participation of tens of thousands of women and youth was a huge gain but it’s in the past. There were no structures left behind where women really could decide their fate. The fourteen year jail threat is a reinstatement of the criminalization of women’s rights, with the usual weapons of intimidation and terror. It cannot be separated from the strategy of re – establishing church state relations on a stable basis. The contrast between the govt action in criminalising women’s self determination over their own bodies and rewarding the Sisters of Charity, serial abusers of women and children, with the 350 million euro prize of the new national maternity hospital says it all about the limited progress made around a Dail centred strategy. It also underlines the nature of the state, which has had the church as an essential pillar of its survival since it’s foundation and is not about to give it up. The new relationship between church and state, which Leo Varadker talked about with the pope, is looking very like the old one.

As Social Democrat TD Roisin Shortall pointed out in the Dail, the fact that the government is now talking about having a representative on the board of the National Maternity Hospital is evidence that the deal between church and state concocted by professional negotiator Kieran Mulvey two years ago was worthless and that even the government do not believe the assurances of the Sisters of Charity and of their shell company, St Vincent’s, that they will facilitate abortion.

Despite criticism the government are pressing ahead and are now proposing to link all maternity hospitals with surgical hospitals. This makes clinical sense. But without further discussion it means that the government’s corrupt deal with the churches shell company will become the standard practice in the health service.

It was perfectly correct to agree with others to fight together for repeal of the constitutional amendment banning abortion. What was wrong was subsuming other demands in the cause of unity and not fighting constantly for a deeper unity in defence of women’s right to choose and organising the many radicals and young people independently within the repeal campaign to fight on for full democratic rights.

In the new law, in the handover of the maternity hospital, the same old Janus face of the Irish state, the unity of Church and state, is emerging yet again.

Leo Varadker said during the Pope’s visit that there needed to be a new relationship between the state and the Catholic church, yet the attempts by Simon Harris to gift the new maternity hospital to the Sisters of Charity behind our backs looks very much like the old relation-ship between church and state. The very fact that he is talking to the nuns despite their record of abuse and contempt for survivors is compounding the churches’ crimes and is an arrogant dismissal of the overwhelming vote for women’s reproductive rights.

The Campaign against Church Ownership of women’s healthcare was established with a sense to urgency in order to stop the imminent handover of the new NMH. The Sisters of Charity, despite their claims that they have divested from the new hospital, are set to become the owners of the new NMH as it will be under the control of St Vin-cent’s, their private healthcare empire. Minister Simon Harris is expected in the coming weeks to sign the legal contract without recourse to the Dail.

The Background

Holles St, also known as the National Maternity Hospital urgently needed a new hospital and Minister Harris commissioned Kieran Mulvey, the former labour relations maestro, to draw up a report. In the 2016 Mulvey Agreement report Holles Street agreed to a takeover bid by St Vincent’s Healthcare Group, which is owned and controlled by the Irish Sisters of Charity.

The Mulvey report gave rise to widespread public outrage. In 2017 a My Uplift petition opposing the Sisters of Charity as sole owners was launched and got over 104,000 signatures. A significant demonstration to the Dail piled on the pressure with the demonstrators carrying a huge ream of paper petitions extending the length of the protest. This led in 29th May 2017 to the Sisters of Charity (SOC) announcing that they were ending their involvement with St Vincent’s Healthcare Group (SVHG) and transferring ownership of SVHG to a new company with charitable status which would be called St Vincent’s.

This move by the nuns / SOC was intended to allay fears of any possible religious influence on the ownership and governance structure of the new publicly-funded €350 million NMH, as ownership by them would be seen as incompatible with providing the full range of women’s reproductive healthcare. This is even more so the case as a result of the repeal the Eighth Amendment.

Despite their claim of divesting the ethos will remain Catholic as the new NMH be-coming part of St Vincent’s means it will answer to St Vincent’s with its catholic ethos and not to the state. The Mulvey report agreed that the Chair of the Board of the new NMH will report to the clinical director of St Vincent’s. This in effect will mean more Catholic control not less – abortion, the morning after pill, sterilisation and vasectomy are all banned in Vincent’s hospitals. An ethos that places women’s health and lives at risk has no place in a national maternity hospital.

The State and the church

Following the uproar and demonstrations, to defuse the situation Minister Harris agreed to negotiate a deal between the NMH, St Vincent’s and the state. These talks are still ongoing. At the outset Harris said he would report in a month but it is now well over a year and he is still negotiating. He has said he will report out-side the Dail. This is the government that claims to be for transparency. The only people he needs to inform are the people and in particular the women of Ireland who voted for repeal. We demand Harris break off contact with organizations who have a disreputable history of abuse against women and an entrenched history of denying women access to essential medical reproductive procedures. The massive Yes vote for choice and a woman’s right to choose must be respected now.

We demand an ending of the talks and demand that the hospital be in put in public ownership with a secular ethos. The new hospital must be owned by the people if abortion is to be guaranteed; Public funding of the new build must be made condi-tional on public ownership of the new hospital. It cannot be built on the grounds of St Vincent’s. An alternative should be to expropriate the land from the nuns as part compensation for the crimes they have committed against so many vulnerable people and children, although nothing can compensate people for the horrors that were done to them and for those who died as a result of their cruelty.

We have the model of James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown which is a public hospital.

We have to be conscious of the nature of the Irish state. When it was founded after the civil war it had a very reactionary character (many would say a counter revolutionary character) the church was given a very central role, the social obligations of the state were handed to church control and we are now fully aware that in these areas abuse of highly criminal nature became routine. Slavery, the kidnapping and trafficking of babies and abuse of a sexual and violent nature are crimes which if committed by any organisation other than religious would lead to the closure of those enterprises and their assets seized not to mention hard jail time for the perpetrators. But the church because of its central role as an essential prop of state power has instead been gradually rehabilitated.

Immediately after the repeal vote Leo Varadker announced the need to rebuild a new relation-ship with the catholic church. Is this gifting of the NMH to the SoC to be the foundation of this new relationship?

The Campaign

The Campaign was set up in late June. Since then we have gained wide sponsorship, organized a successful Education Day on Oct 20th and press conference on Thursday 22nd and are seeing the mushrooming of sup-port groups across the country.

Nonetheless there remains a widespread lack of knowledge of what’s happening. People are taken in by the liberal wing of the government around Simon Harris. They can’t envisage that he would do a deal behind closed doors with the nuns and Church and subvert the vote of the people given his support for repeal. Unfortunately, that what is set to happen – 350 million of taxpayer’s money is set to be handed over to a private religious healthcare consortium – SVHG own St Vincent’s University hospital, St Vincent’s private, St Michael’s and now the new NMH. This privatization of our health service and continuation of the neo liberal policy of a two tier health service will not be allowed to proceed by the women and people of this country.

Why would the SoC and St Vincent’s sign up to a legal agreement that would damage their healthcare empire. Why would we believe this? The same SoC refused to pay the 3 million to the redress scheme. In 2002, the Sisters of Charity, who operated five residential schools, signed up to a shared €128m. indemnity bill agreed with the State. They have yet to contribute. Following publication of the Ryan report in 2009, the order offered a further €5m. but to date, it has paid just €2m. The Sisters of Charity also owned Magdalene laundries. Requests by UN committees, including the UN Committee against Torture, to contribute to the State redress scheme have been ignored. In 2013, the nuns announced that they would not be making any contribution to reparations for women incarcerated in their laundries.

Dr Peter Boylan said;“Over a year ago, I asked to be provided with a single example anywhere in the world of a hospital operating under Catholic ethos which provides the full range of women’s healthcare. I am still waiting”.

We have a fight on our hands. The separation of church and state will require a veritable revolution to achieve. But we have the momentum on our side. The youth and young women of this country voted in vast numbers for change they will not tolerate a shoddy deal which cheats them out of their victory and threatens continued abuse and denial of women’s rights.

The Minister of Health assures us that any medical procedures that are in accordance with the law of the land will be carried out and the states interests protected. What we can expect is continued distress and disaster for patients and court case after court case.

The majority of our so called public hospitals in Ireland operate under a religious ethos. If we lose the battle to make the NMH a public hospital with a secular charter it will be all the more difficult to remove the clerical ethos from the country’s main hospitals. We are determined to stop the handover of the new NMH and then go on to remove the church from ownership and control of women’s healthcare

Make the demonstration in Dublin on Dec 8th a success.

Publicize the petition. Demand TDs respect the referendum vote and insist the new hospital be public and secular.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/22/12783/feed/0JIM AITKEN WRITES AN APPRECIATION OF TOM LEONARDhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/22/jim-aitken-writes-an-appreciation-of-tom-leonard/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/22/jim-aitken-writes-an-appreciation-of-tom-leonard/#respondTue, 22 Jan 2019 20:49:11 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12777Jim Aitken, poet and playwright, has written an appreciation of the Glasgow poet, Tom Leonard, who died on 21st December, 2018. It can be seen on the Culture Matters blog at:-

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/22/jim-aitken-writes-an-appreciation-of-tom-leonard/feed/0FAILING GOVERNMENTS IN IRELAND – SOUTH AND NORTHhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/22/failing-governments-in-ireland-south-and-north/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/22/failing-governments-in-ireland-south-and-north/#commentsTue, 22 Jan 2019 18:11:07 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12769We are posting two articles from the Socialist Democracy (Ireland) website, highlighting the problems faced by the current Fine Gael government in the Dail and the lack of enthusiasm for reviving Stormont in Belfast.

1, CONFIDENCE AND SUPPLY AGREEMENT EXTENDED

Varadkar (Fine Gael) and Martin (Fianna Fail) agree deal at the Dail

A de facto government of national unity in Ireland weakens capitalism and poses a sharp challenge for the opposition.

In mid-December Fianna Fail and Fine Gael agreed a new confidence and supply agreement, maintaining the minority Fine Gael government in place until 2020. The event went almost unnoticed, with smiles from both parties, claims that the agreement was forced by the national interest and the imminence of Brexit. The smaller parties cried foul from the sidelines, having been deprived of an election contest.

At a superficial level this can be seen as horse trading between the two major capitalist parties in which Fine Gael got the better of Fianna Fail. Micheál Martin had to walk away without any quid pro quo for supporting the government. In the recent abortion referendum both leaders tried to pivot to take account of the more liberal attitudes within the population. Leo Varadkar succeeded and Fine Gael remain the most popular party. Micheál Martin failed because of the reaction of his own backbenchers stymied his own u-turn and blocked the path back to power for Fianna Fail. He really had no choice but to back down in the stand-off and wait for better times for his own party.

Yet what Martin wanted was very little. He wanted some cosmetic public concessions to justify his surrender to Fine Gael, but these were simply to demonstrate a supposed progressive element to Fianna Fail and its ability to gain reforms for its followers. He was trying to disguise the fact that there is only one government program supported in full by both major parties. The lack of concessions makes this crystal clear. We have a government of national unity and the programme of that government is austerity, privatisation, landlordism, the strangling of public services and the crushing of workers’ rights. The continued housing crisis and the handover of a new National Maternity Hospital to the religious orders are recent examples of the programme this government will operate.

The ongoing capitalist crisis has been managed by oppression of the working class and it has been successful in ensuring that the workers paid the bankers debt, yet there is a cost to pay in terms of the decay of political structures. Fianna Fail, once the party of government, has been reduced to a shadow. The new national government is strengthened in the short term but weakened in the longer term because there is no longer a serious opposition party with some choice of political programme. The myth of parliamentary democracy is torn away and weakens the illusions of workers in the pro-capitalist parties.

But this is bad news for the self-proclaimed left groups also. The Labour Party, themselves decimated by their support for austerity, are trying to claw their way back to the standard position as junior partner in a capitalist government. Sinn Fein are attempting to transition from an old leadership backed by the authority of the IRA towards a more liberal and right wing position. They are out of government in the North and have no prospect of returning. They suffered a setback in the recent presidential elections, and have seen a split to the right around the issue of abortion. The party is skipping and jumping between presenting itself as the main component of a future right wing government coalition and, on the other hand, signalling that it is at heart still a party of the left and willing to protest the right. A delayed election robs them of momentum and allows for greater fragmentation. As for the socialist groups and the independents, they bump along at the bottom of the poll, unable to convince the majority of the population that a programme of parliamentary reformism will be successful.

The lack of alternative does not end at the gates of the Dail. The trade unions have been leading lobbying exercises and demonstrations meant to resolve the crises in housing and in health. The formation of what is in reality a national government and the lack of even minimal reform to accommodate the new arrangement between the major parties means that lobbying exercises can have only a very limited effect. The whole reformist effort that has tended to blunt protest across the past decade is now running into the buffers.

There are small but significant signs that events are going to slip outside the network of partnerships that link Irish capital and the trade union leadership. So a mass campaign that halted with the withdrawal of the abortion question from the constitution and accepted quite limited legislation has not seen the issue closed down but has seen further discontent around continued links between church and state in the health services. Pleadings at the gates of the Dail around housing were followed by a government plan that will feed vulture capital and landlordism and smoother the path towards a mass giveaway of public land. However protests have not ended and we now have a context of terrorism by paramilitary forces employed by the landlords in evictions and direct action by communities to force them back.

The situation today will not stand still. The original confidence and supply arrangement was an attempt by Micheál Martin to avoid the bear trap of coalition. The history of recent times is littered with the corpse of junior partners in reactionary governments that acted as sacrificial anode for the major government party. The renewed confidence and supply agreement, his failure to win any concessions in the current negotiations means that Fianna Fail has been reduced to the junior partnership status he was trying to avoid without even the cabinet posts and patronage that are the lifeblood of capitalist parties. The possibility of reviving Fianna Fail must go downhill.

There are very large question marks over the ability of Sinn Fein to present itself as the new Fianna Fail and in any case their ambition is for that very target of junior partnership in coalition that has doomed parties in the past. The schemes of the left for a left unity government that would have to be built in conjunction with Sinn Fein have turned to dust. The promise to use the Dail to mobilise on the streets has been turned on its head and is now mobilising on the streets to gain more parliamentary clout. In the absence of any commitment to independent action by the workers there appears to be no realistic strategy for a general mobilisation.

As Yeats said in another context: “things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.” The constant grinding of capitalist decay is eroding both the mechanisms of government rule and the standard responses of petition and reform.
At the end of the day reformism is based on the belief that the working class will never respond or turn to revolution. We are ready seen preliminary stirrings that will disprove these nostrums.

Recently an informal coalition, #wedeservebetter, attempted a mobilisation in the North of Ireland with a single demand that the Stormont administration be returned. Despite attempts to boost the mobilisation by the local press and media, by prominent businessmen and by NICVA, the community and voluntary sector organisers, the mobilisation was a failure, with only a few hundred at various locations and the Belfast rally cancelled. The campaign fragmented when some of the supporters asked to speak about outstanding issues such as abortion rights and gay marriage. They were prevented from speaking. It became clear that the campaign wanted the return of Stormont as an end in itself and were not concerned with the argument that in some way a new administration would make life better. The #wedeservebetter tag could not have been better chosen, summing up middle-class desire for comfort and stability along with disinterest in what it would cost the working-class.

However the debate cruelly exposed left supporters of the campaign. Members of the Communist Party and of the Socialist Workers Network/People Before Profit had argued “progressive” demonstrations that took up gay rights and abortion rights could be supported and act as a stepping stone to a more progressive movement.
This is not simply mistaken, it is misdirection. The left are fully aware that sections of the DUP are perfectly willing to split their party to prevent any social reform. Without an inbuilt majority the DUP would not reverse direction to support a return to Stormont. In pursuing this line the left are simply accommodating a narrow section of middle-class youth. They are also accommodating the trade union bureaucracy, who argue that Stormont will have to return in order to legislate for workers’ rights. This is despite the fact Stormont has no history of any progressive actions and ignores the fact that the bureaucracy, in order to save Stormont, accepted the “Fresh Start” austerity programme and have signed off on health and community services reform which will mean widespread privatisation.

On the day of the failed demonstrations the BBC produced a report that perfectly illustrated the lies on which #wedeservebetter campaign was based. It said:

Northern Ireland is a nation (false)
There is no government (false)
There is no government because the parties don’t agree (false)
There is widespread public anger at the lack of an administration which is a denial of democracy false).

The North of Ireland has none of the characteristics of a nation. The local administration is not a government. It has collapsed not because the parties couldn’t agree but for the reason that the DUP withdrew from the agreement because it included minor concessions on the Irish language. The absence of Stormont is perfectly in tune with the results of the last election, where nationalist voters opposed any further capitulation to the DUP and Unionist voters voted to “defend the union” even if this meant opposing devolution. Rather than public anger, there is widespread public indifference. People are very aware of the corruption and sectarianism that infested Stormont and do not see its return is helping them in any way.

Perhaps the biggest lie is that the North has been without a government. The fact is that it has been continuously governed by the British Westminster administration before and after the collapse of the local administration at Stormont. No one on the left or right is willing to acknowledge this. There are committed to a programme of reform through a local administration even though their experience is of endless corruption without the slightest sign of reform.

It follows right away that the target for campaigns to demand democratic rights should be the Westminster government. At the moment British rule is based on a fiction, held up by the compliance of other parties that is outside all the legal frameworks established by the Good Friday Agreement. Under this agreement the failure to convene an administration should mean the abolition of the body and the institution of direct rule.

As it is, the British have instituted invisible direct rule, where they have absolute responsibility for the administration of the six counties but refused to acknowledge this. This enables them to support the DUP, who have demanded direct rule, to park the whole issue of the collapse of the Good Friday Agreement, and to avoid any serious consultation with Dublin, who are formally required to be involved but in any case did not want to be consulted. Sinn Fein remain silent because they intend at some stage to return to the Assembly and because they cannot afford to admit that decades of strategy have ended in failure.

There is one other string to the British bow. They have a strategy of Old King Log (from Aesop’s Fables – The Frogs Who Desired a King). They do only what is necessary but freeze many funding streams in order to starve local groups of money and patronage. This story is that if Stormont reassembles many of the problems of health, education, welfare and social services will be resolved.

This is a complete fantasy. When it was running Stormont was a source of endless corruption and sectarian division. Before it fell Sinn Fein and the DUP had agreed a full spectrum of offensives that would see the quality of public services and the standard of living of the poor fall dramatically. It is however an argument enthusiastically supported by the trade union bureaucracy and by the NGOs of the community and voluntary sector who are directly dependent on government patronage.

Despite the claims of the #wedeservebetter campaign neither community has changed its position. For Unionists rejection of the Good Friday Agreement and defence of the union is all. For nationalists some concessions from the DUP are regarded as necessary for further progress. Rather than demanding the return of Stormont the prevailing mood is one of apathetic indifference.

So why does there #wedeservebetter continue to have a hold? It has broad sympathy. There was widespread media support for what turned out to be an imaginary mobilisation based on a Facebook rant. Alongside the campaign came support from Belfast’s leading luxury hotelier. In the van was NIVCA, representing a range of charities and NGOs poised to assist in the privatisation of many public services in the name of community and anxiously waiting allocation of funds from Stormont. There was some representation of public sector workers at the Derry demonstration and this represents constant reassurance by the trade union leadership that the collapse of local services and of workers conditions will be repaired when Stormont resumes. In typical cowardly fashion the union leaderships went into hiding at the first sign of controversy. Above all the source of the #wedeservebetter sentiment lies with Sinn Fein itself who, while they refuse to surrender immediately to the DUP, have made it absolutely clear that they are committed to the return of Stormont and that is what everybody else should be supporting.

There is an alternative, spelt out by Bernadette McAliskey, as #bulldozestormont. As explained above this has had little traction because the vast majority of the political forces outside unionism are committed to the return of Stormont and even within the DUP there is a strategic debate about which road will best maintain their position – direct rule or a return to devolution. The other issue is that #bulldozestormont can only be implemented as part of a drive for United Ireland. The capitalist parties in Ireland are in fact going in the opposite direction and flirting with a return to the Commonwealth. As Brexit looms a United Ireland inside Europe is the best option for Irish workers in the absence of an international workers movement able to overthrow European capital. In the absence of the independent action of the workers all sorts of fantasies such as #wedeservebetter will gain currency only to be exposed as illusions.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2019/01/22/failing-governments-in-ireland-south-and-north/feed/1UK: THE POLITICAL CRISIS INTENSIFIES OVER THE BREXIT DEALhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/12/11/uk-the-political-crisis-intensifies-over-the-brexit-deal/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/12/11/uk-the-political-crisis-intensifies-over-the-brexit-deal/#commentsTue, 11 Dec 2018 11:18:08 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12744This article first posted by Socialist Democracy (Ireland) analyses the crisis for the UK state, the British ruling class and the Tories and Labour over there deal May is trying to get through parliament.

UK: THE POLITICAL CRISIS INTENSIFIES OVER THE BREXIT DEAL

The unveiling of the draft agreement on withdrawal from the EU has intensified the political crisis within the British ruling elite – provoking a rash of resignations from the Conservative government; threats to overthrow the premiership of Theresa May; and warnings of dire consequences should it fail to win support in Parliament.

The draft agreement has brought clarity to a number of issues. One of these is the weight given to Irish concerns in the negotiations. Despite all the talk about Ireland being high on the agenda it was the relationship between the UK and the EU that was the overriding priority. Issues such as the Irish border were prominent but only to the degree that they could be used as a means to advance the EU’s broader aims. An EU that imposed 42% of Europe’s banking debt on the Irish people would have no hesitation in sacrificing them again to secure an agreement. Another myth that has been dispelled is one surrounding the influence of the DUP over the British government. When it came to formulating the draft agreement the British were prepared to override their objections – the unionist tail didn’t wag the British dog. If the DUP does have any influence it is because their views are shared by the most right wing elements of the Conservative party. On the European-wide stage the political and social weight carried by northern unionists is very limited.

Draft agreementThe draft agreement – which largely conforms to the demands of the EU – also reveals the relative weakness of the UK. Despite the threats of walking away without an agreement – the so-called “no deal” option – the British were forced to accept what was offered. Theresa May’s earlier claim that “a no deal was better than a bad deal” has now been completely reversed. And there is no doubt the draft agreement is a bad deal that puts the UK in a worse position than if it had continued as member of the EU. Its main provisions include:

• the UK paying the EU £39 billion to cover all its financial obligations in a “divorce” bill.• a 21-month transition period, for government and businesses, under which the UK will remain under the jurisdiction of EU rules and the European Court of Justice.• the potential extension of the transition period (during which the UK would continue paying into the EU) if a long-term trade deal cannot be finalised by the end of 2020.• the UK remaining in a customs union with the EU until a broader EU-UK trade deal can be finalised.• the triggering of a “backstop” – in the event of a trade deal not being struck – that would keep the UK in a single customs territory that could only come to an end with the agreement of the EU.• the application of EU competition rules during the period of any temporary customs union.• the downgrading of access to the single market for British based financial institutions.

The terms of this agreement will be hugely damaging to the British economy. It is not the soft Brexit or the least worst option that many commentators are portraying it as. But given the relative weight of the parties to the negotiations (the EU’s $14 trillion economy, as against the UK’s $2 trillion economy) this was likely to be the outcome. The overriding priority of the EU to preserve itself as a political and economic bloc – which required a clear demonstration of the disadvantages of Brexit – was always going to prevail. What the draft agreement clarifies is that the only choice there was (and continues to be) is not between a hard and soft Brexit but between Brexit and no Brexit.Brexiteer delusions

For many arch Brexiteers the draft withdrawal agreement has dealt a bitter blow to their vision of how a post Brexit Britain would operate on the world stage. While they may console themselves with the thought that they were betrayed by government officials the truth is that their vision bore no correspondence to material reality.

In a global economy dominated by trade blocs and customs unions an “independent” Britain was always going to find itself in a relatively weak position. This weakness was exposed in the negotiations. It was also exposed in the lack of progress in advancing trade deals to replace the ones that Britain was a party to as a member of the EU. There was no evidence that renegotiating existing deals would produce better terms. There was also no evidence that Britain was advancing negotiations on new trade deals with other regions not covered by EU trade deals. Most of the trading blocs favoured negotiations with the EU rather than individual states. Many of the Brexiteers proposals on trade seemed to be based on the belief that the legacy of the British Empire would help the UK develop trading relations with former colonies. This ignored the fact that the days of colonialism and imperial privilege are long gone and that countries such as India are expanding economies and regional powers in their own right. They may be interested in trade deals but those deals will reflect the current power relationship between the two.

The much trumpeted US trade deal also came to nothing after it became obvious that it too would be unfavourable for Britain. Most of the negativity towards this proposed deal centred on the prospect of the US dumping cheap agricultural products (the infamous chlorinated chickens) into the UK market. While this was just one element of the proposed deal it did highlight how the US would use the relative weakness of Britain to force changes in regulations and standards not just in agriculture but across the whole economy (including public services). The fall-back position for the Brexiteers was that Britain did not need a deal with the EU as it would be covered by WTO rules which would allow trade to continue. This ignores the fact under those rules much of Britain’s trade would be subject to additional tariffs. It also assumes that the UK would be automatically admitted to the WTO. However, this is not the case and several countries, including China, have already raised objections over outstanding disputes. There are also doubts over the continued existence of the WTO with the Trump administration threatening to collapse the organisation. The current trends of consolidating trade blocs and increasing conflict over trade would place a British economy outside of the EU in a very vulnerable position. That some leading Brexiteers have been reduced to forecasting a fifty year wait for the benefits of Brexit to materialise really shows the weakness of their economic arguments.

Where the Brexiteers believe they are on firmer ground is on the question of sovereignty and the claim that it will enable Britain to “take back control”. Yet the likely outcome of negotiations shows this claim to be as dubious as those made on the economy. The reality is that Brexit, by weakening the economy and removing it from the political institutions of the EU, actually diminishes British sovereignty. It places the UK in the position of adhering to rules that it will have no role in formulating. One of the arguments made for Britain joining the EEC back in the 1970s’ was that a pooling its sovereignty with other states would increase its influence and arrest the relative decline Britain had experienced in the post WWII period. Brexit would be a complete reversal this long standing strategic orientation of British capitalism the consequence of which would likely be an acceleration of economic decline and a further loss of sovereignty.

While the arguments of the arch Brexiteers may be delusional they wouldn’t exist if they didn’t have an appeal to a section of the capitalist class that sees a benefit in doing away with regulations and human rights. It is no coincidence that the models for post Brexit Britain are authoritarian states such as Singapore. If this vision was to prevail it would usher in a wholesale assault of the living standards and democratic rights of the British working class. While such predictions may sound alarmist it would be wrong to underestimate the irrational and destructive tendencies inherent within capitalism. The historical record shows that they have prevailed before and there is no reason to believe that they will not prevail again.

Conservatism and populismThe factional struggles within the British ruling class over Brexit are reflected in the current upheavals within Britain’s traditional ruling party. While the Conservative party is often portrayed as the party of big business the need to construct an electoral majority means it’s base of support stretches across class lines – encompassing not only the bourgeoisie but also the petit bourgeoisie as well as backward sections of the working-class. It was these latter two social layers that was critical in delivering the Brexit vote.

It is also the case that a faction of the capitalist class itself – based primarily upon finance capital – was also in favour of Brexit. Indeed, it was hedge funds that provided much of the finance for the various leave campaigns. This was evident at the time of the referendum and has become even clearer from the subsequent investigations into the networks that funded the advertising and mass data collection operations such as Cambridge Analytica. There is a notable trans-Atlantic character to this with some of the main funders of the pro Brexit campaign – such as hedge fund boss Robert Mercer – also being among the biggest donors to the Trump presidential campaign.

It is this nexus of finance capital and far right politics that has been the driving force of populist movements across the world. Their emergence in the period following the financial crash is evidence of the decay of capitalism and – as a consequence – the intensification of rivalries between different factions of the capitalist class. They fit the Marxist definition of populism as an attempt by a sectional interest to impose itself within the ruling class and upon society as a whole.

The rise of right wing populism – and the aggressive nationalism and racism at its core – also points to a growing rivalry between capitalist states. The intra capitalist rivalry operates not only on a domestic but also a global level – populism and imperialism are therefore completely bound up together. We see how inter imperialist rivalry has been ratcheted up over the recent period as the Trump administration seeks to restructure US relations with other states within north America and between itself and the other political-economic blocs in Europe and Asia. Much of this is currently centred around trade disputes with the US using tariffs and the threat of tariffs to impose terms on its rivals. One of those rivals is the EU and the Trump administration clearly sees Brexit – and more generally the rise of right wing populist movements within Europe – as a means to weaken it. Trump himself has explicitly backed Brexit and even suggested that the leading Brexiteer Boris Johnson would be a better choice for prime minister than Theresa May.

While such rhetoric from a president is new the US view of the EU as a rival or potential rival has a long history. Indeed, one of the reasons the US supported British membership of the EU in the past was the belief that its close ally would act to limit the ambitions of the bloc. Within the EU the UK has played a spoiling role – promoting expansion over integration and limiting the development of any independent capacity in the areas of defence and foreign relations. The danger for the US is that a UK outside of the EU diminishes its influence. For the British the risks are potentially greater with a post Brexit UK – that is more closely aligned with US interests than ever before – being viewed as a hostile entity by the EU. In this scenario the prospects of a so-called soft Brexit recede even further.

The dynamic of Brexit is towards greater confrontation between the UK and the EU. This is necessitated by not only the conflicting priorities of the two parties put also the unequal nature of their relationship. The demands of the Brexiteers – and their backers in the US – can only be achieved through a weakening of the EU. And though it appears contradictory – given its nationalistic character – Brexit if it is to have any chance of “success” has to be exported to other parts of Europe. This is why the wave of right wing populism has increasingly been organising on an international level with links being forged between various states and parties across the globe that ranges from the British Brexiteers to the Trump administration and the reactionary governments in Eastern Europe and most recently to South America with the success of the far right in Brazil. What we are witnessing is the formation of a right wing international promoting its own perverted version of permanent revolution. The irony is that when it comes to an internationalist understanding of politics the populist right is currently miles ahead of a left – whether that be social democratic or so called revolutionary – that cannot raise its sights beyond a national level.

Despite the recent success of the populist faction of the capitalist class it is still uncertain that it will be successful in imposing its programme within the ruling elite or upon society as a whole. In the face of the populist upsurge the dominant sections of the capitalist class are seeking to reassert themselves through their weight in the economy and influence over state institutions. In the US this is seen clearly in the opposition of many sectors of business to Trump’s trade policies. The warnings from business leaders – and from officials such as the Governor of the Bank of England – about the dire consequences of a no deal Brexit are evidence of this intra class struggle in Britain. In the face of this the most ardent Brexiteers within the Conservative party have been put on the back foot with their latest threats to overturn the leadership on Theresa May coming to nothing. Most of the right wing forces in Britain – whether they are leave or remain – are now consolidating around the approach to Brexit set out by the government. Whether this will hold remains to be seen but it does show the determination of the ruling class and the ruling party to remain united.

While there may be divisions within the capitalist class what all the factions – liberal, conservative or populist – are united on is the overriding priority to maintain their rule and to counter any potential advance for the working class or for socialism. In a period of acute crisis the ruling class will opt for fascist and authoritarian solutions over the most modest of reforms. This is the lesson of history and it is the lesson of today. It also points to the folly of a Popular Front strategy to counter the populist right that attaches the working class to a supposedly more “progressive” faction of the bourgeoisie. This can only end in disaster.

Labour and the working classThe working class must look must look to its organisations and parties. In the case of Brexit this means the trade union movement and the Labour Party. Unfortunately, their current position on Brexit is almost indistinguishable from that of the Conservatives. Rather than oppose Brexit and its ruinous consequences for the working class the Labour Party accepts the outcome of the referendum and says that a Labour government would negotiate a withdrawal from the EU.

It has put forward six tests on which to judge any withdrawal agreement. These include the UK having the “exact same benefits” as it currently has as members of the Single Market and Customs Union; and preventing a race to the bottom in terms of employment rights and conditions. The Labour leadership know these tests cannot be met. But rather than use them as a basis on which to oppose Brexit the tests have become a mechanism to appease various factions within the labour movement and to distance the party from the coming disaster. In practice the Labour party has adopted a position of passive acceptance of Brexit. Some left commentators have argued this is a clever strategy from Labour that will see the party sweep to power as the government falls apart. However, the sharp economic downtown and boost to reactionary politics that will follow from Brexit would not provide conditions favourable to the election of a social democratic government.

Labour’s position on Brexit has been in keeping with Jeremy Corbyn’s approach to most issues in which the preservation of the unity of the labour movement has been the overriding priority. In the case of Brexit the leadership has sought to balance between the Blairites who oppose Brexit (but also want to maintain the status quo) and the traditional right within the labour movement who want to pander to the anti-immigration sentiments of the most backward elements of the working class. Another current within labour (and which Corbyn has long been aligned with) is one that has opposed the EU on the basis that it is a barrier to the implementation to of a socialist programme in Britain. This current has a long history from the CP’s British Road to Socialism of the 1950’s, the Bennite movement of the 70’s & 80’s, the trade union backed No2EU of the 2000’s, right up to the present day advocates of Lexit. Despite their diversity the ideological thread that runs through all these is the proposition that socialism can be advanced at a national level.

In order to justify its stance the Labour party has indulged a number of myths surrounding the referendum outcome. The most common of these is the regional divide – that there was a marked difference in the views of Labour supporters on Brexit depending on where they lived. There is an assumption that most Labour supporters in the Midlands and north of England voted for Brexit. Sometimes this is expressed in terms of the disproportionate number of Labour MPs representing constituencies that voted Leave. While this supposed dilemma for the party has been used to justify the cautious approach of the Labour leadership it is not one that is actually based on reality. Various studies and surveys related to the referendum result have revealed that almost two thirds of Labour supporters voted Remain. It is also the case that most people in employment voted Remain. Moreover, levels of support for Remain among Labour supporters and people in employment were similar across all regions. Such research presents a sharp contrast to the lazy stereotype of working class people as being more prejudiced than other sections of society. This is not to say that there are not backward elements within the working class but by themselves were not decisive in determining the outcome of the referendum. They will also not be decisive in the election of a future Labour government – either because they would never support the party or in a general election many of them would vote on issues that took priority over Britain’s membership of the EU. Indeed, there was evidence of this in last year’s general election in which the predicted advances by the Tories in Labour held seats in Brexit voting regions of England never materialised.

If opposition to Brexit is high among Labour supporters it is even higher among the party membership with surveys showing ninety percent in opposition. This opposition was demonstrated at the party’s conference this year with dozens of anti-Brexit motions being submitted and a motion calling for the party to “support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote” being overwhelming backed by delegates. The Labour leadership has said that its preference is for a general election but for such an election to have a decisive impact Labour would have to adopt a position that was unambiguous in its opposition to Brexit and which would contrast dramatically with that of a Conservative party under the likely leadership of an arch Brexiteer. An election in which clear alternatives were posed would also deal with the argument about respecting the outcome of the referendum that the leadership has hidden behind. A victory for Labour under these circumstances would be a demonstration of a shift in public opinion and provide a mandate to change the outcome of the Brexit negotiations.

While the above would be the best scenario on Brexit it may not be what comes to pass. The ability of the ruling class to hold together and impose their own solution – railroading a deal through parliament or holding a second referendum, or going for a hard Brexit if its populist faction wins out – cannot be dismissed. Indeed, given the slowness of the Labour leadership to evolve its Brexit position, these latter scenarios are probably more likely. The least that should be demanded of Labour is that they follow through on their six tests on Brexit and vote down whatever withdrawal agreement the government brings forward. The worst case scenario would be for Labour to support the withdrawal agreement on the basis that any deal is better than a no deal scenario. As the deadline for approval of an agreement approaches the pressure on the party to act in the “national interest” will be intense. Given the record of the Labour leadership and the trade unions on caving in to such pressure – most recently over allegations of anti-semitism – this is a real possibility. Such a move – by facilitating the ruinous consequences of Brexit and disappointing the hopes that millions of people (particularly the young) have invested in a Corbyn lead Labour party – would be a huge betrayal that would destroy any prospect of a social democratic government coming to power in Britain.

People’s VoteAs the deadline for Brexit approaches the campaign for a People’s Vote has been ramped up. This is the call for a referendum on the withdrawal agreement between the UK and EU. Though not stated explicitly this is designed as a mechanism for stopping Brexit – the assumption is that a rejection of the withdrawal agreement would see the UK continue its membership of the EU.

The People’s Vote campaign very much aligned with the interests of the dominant section of the capitalist class who favour the status quo. That can be seen in the financial sponsors of the campaign and also in its spokespeople who are drawn exclusively from the so-called “centrist” current within British politics that encompasses Blairites, Lib Dems and a section of the Conservative party. The main spokesperson for the campaign is Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell. Increasing interventions on Brexit by the former PM suggest that he is one of the main figures in this conservative opposition to Brexit even though his unpopularity keeps him off any public platform. Blair’s role highlights the weakness of a campaign that seeks to mobilise popular support but which promotes a brand of politics and accompanying personalities that have long been discredited. The conservatism of the People’s Vote campaign is revealed by its hostility to the social democratic policies promoted by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party. For them it is not just about preserving the status quo in relation to Britain’s membership of the EU but also in relation to politics and class relations within Britain. What they share with Brexiteers is an implacable opposition to anything – even the modest programme of reform put forward by Corbyn – that could give encouragement to the revival of a working class movement.

SocialismAs it stands the working class in Britain – and more broadly across Europe – have been bystanders to the factional struggles within the capitalist class and the various bourgeois parties aligned to them. On Brexit the alternatives presented – whether they be for or against – all fall within the framework of continued capitalist domination. This goes unchallenged despite the supposed ascendancy of the left within the membership and support base of the Labour party. What this points to is a severe weakness not only in terms of organisation but also in terms of politics – of adapting to public opinion rather than advancing a programme that promotes an independent working class and pro-labour position. While we have no illusions in the reformist approach of the Labour party (even one lead from the left) its current position on Brexit is actually putting its own platform of modest social democratic reform in doubt.

The left (whether revolutionary or reformist) must oppose Brexit on the basis that it is wholly reactionary. It is reactionary in the political sense that it gives free reign to nationalism and racism but it is also reactionary in the economic sense in that it seeks to turn back the clock to a period when national economies and nation states were dominant. It flies in the face of the ongoing development of capitalism towards greater integration of markets and internationalisation of production. The delusion underpinning Brexit and the other forms of right wing populism is that these historical trends can be overturned.

Socialists shouldn’t concede anything to such reactionary delusions or retreat back to the perspective of the nation state. At the same time we should not hold any illusions in an EU which is irredeemably pro-capitalist and is irreformable. The recent experience of the bailouts and crushing austerity programmes imposed on Ireland and Greece are ample evidence of this. What the EU represents is a failing attempt by European states and capital to adapt to the integrating and internationalising trends within capitalism. It is the contradiction between these economic trends and the attachment of the European ruling classes to their own nation states that is at the root of the crisis and which is fuelling the rise of right wing populism.

Socialists, especially those guided by Marxism, recognise that the tendencies inherent within capitalist development cannot be reversed. Indeed, the nature of these developments – particularly the expansion and integration of the working class – point towards more favourable conditions for the achievement of socialism. Of course this is not an automatic process – it is dependent on the creation of an international working class movement which has socialism as its explicit aim. This is undoubtedly a huge task and one whose realisation seems far off. Yet the future of such a movement lies in the social and political struggles of today and the solidarity that is being built across national boundaries. One of these current political struggles is over Brexit. While it will be fought primarily within the British labour movement its consequences will be felt in many other countries (not least in Ireland). Workers cannot afford to be reduced to bystanders but through their own parties and organisations seek to shape the outcome. For socialists in the Labour party and trade unions this demands the development of a political position that goes well beyond a defence of Jeremy Corbyn.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/12/11/uk-the-political-crisis-intensifies-over-the-brexit-deal/feed/1FAKE NEWS AND CONSPIRACY MYTHShttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/11/29/fake-news-and-conspiracy-myths/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/11/29/fake-news-and-conspiracy-myths/#respondThu, 29 Nov 2018 18:49:54 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12732We are posting two related articles. The first is from Media Lens and is about their book, Propaganda Blitz, which addresses the issue of corporate control of the mainstream media. The second is written by Thomas Klikauer and looks at the connection between ‘fake news’ and the far right.

There is a connection between the two. The mainstream media’s promotion of the fake news story about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East and the ‘suicide’ of Dr. David Kelly. The AltRight has built on this fake news precedent to develop their own on-line communities, addicted to conspiracy myths, amongst isolated individuals. Their longer tem aim is to mobilise these communities for their own Far Right ends.

1. PROPAGANDA BLITZ

When we started Media Lens in 2001, our guiding aspiration was that independent, web-based activism would have a profoundly positive impact on public discourse.

Hard to believe now, but we nurtured hopes that the greater honesty and compassion of thousands of non-corporate media activists would force traditional media to improve. ‘Mainstream’ outlets that continued to sell elite bias as objective Truth would be relentlessly exposed, become a laughing stock – they would simply have to raise their game. We even had a notion that decent, or half-decent, people working within corporate media might secretly welcome these pressures and quietly embrace change out of enlightened self-interest. Why? Because corporate executives love their children, too. As was very obvious then, and is even more obvious now, the prioritising of profit over people and planet must be reversed.

But, of course, human beings and human societies are not that reasonable and rational. It was never going to be that easy. What has actually happened is that, as non-corporate media have increasingly exposed the limits and failings of corporate media, the latter have adopted a bunker mentality, shutting out inconvenient truths, shutting out dissent, shutting down communication with critics. When we started sending media alerts, BBC and Guardian journalists regularly responded with quite rational, reasonable responses. Now, we mostly receive stony silence, or abusive sneers.

Make no mistake, there has been change: corporate media have been grievously wounded by web-based activism. Their response has been to retreat into an ever more extreme fantasy world that in many ways exceeds the madness even of the McCarthyite era. They have actually become much worse, not better.

In the 1950s, the West really had recently faced down a genuinely existential Nazi threat; Stalin was an utterly ruthless dictator who did in theory (if not in reality) head a party and state bent on global class war and revolution. East and West did find themselves facing a perceived enemy armed with weapons that could wipe us all off the face of the planet, if only by accident. The hysteria, lying and propaganda were preposterous; but they did have some basis, however tenuous, in the real world.

Now, by comparison, we have the same or worse levels of hysteria and intolerance directed against Iraqi, Libyan, North Korean and Iranian ‘threats’ that exist only in the crazed crania of state-corporate propagandists for whom war is just profit-maximising by other means, just another marketing plan. We have claims that omnipresent Putin is seeking to undermine Western democracies at every turn, influencing everything from Brexit to the election of Trump, and of course Corbyn.

And yes, Corbyn – a life-long anti-racist campaigner, a rare compassionate human being in British politics – has been found suddenly to be posing an ‘existential threat’, no less, to Britain’s Jews on the basis of exact truth reversal and pure invention. The Five Filters website recently collated a list of 107 Guardian and Observer articles – all but three of them published this year – promoting this completely fake scandal. As Noam Chomsky commented to us earlier this month:

‘The charges of anti-Semitism against Corbyn are without merit, an underhanded contribution to the disgraceful efforts to fend off the threat that a political party might emerge that is led by an admirable and decent human being, a party that is actually committed to the interests and just demands of its popular constituency and the great majority of the population generally, while also authentically concerned with the rights of suffering and oppressed people throughout the world. Plainly an intolerable threat to order.’ (Noam Chomsky, email to Media Lens, September 9, 2018)

It takes someone of Chomsky’s integrity and standing to help us all to, in effect, pinch ourselves and recognise that the 107 Guardian articles really are fake and really have been published in a corporate newspaper that endlessly rails against ‘fake news’. We ask you, does it take more than a glance at this separate list of Guardian and Observer attacks on Corbyn published between 2015-2017 to understand that the antisemitism ‘scandal’ is just the establishment throwing the ethical kitchen sink at Corbyn having thrown everything else? Could it be more obvious that Corbyn’s mild socialism is simply not allowed as an option for voters?

More incredible even than all of this is the impossible, the unimaginable, the completely insane response to looming climate catastrophe. Set aside this summer’s staggering extreme weather events in the UK, Europe and right around the world. Set aside the giant hurricanes and typhoons that will soon, scientists warn, exceed the category 5 maximum-level strength, such that there will be ‘superstorms capable of taking out cities like Dubai or Tampa. They are here, right now’. Why would that not happen? CO2 levels are rising inexorably. Temperatures are rising inexorably. And last year, as energy analyst Barry Saxifrage reported:

‘humanity set another fossil fuel energy record of 11.4 billion tonnes of oil equivalent (Gtoe). A decade ago we were at 10 Gtoe of energy. In 2000, we were at 8 Gtoe.’

But these smaller scale disasters and warnings are dwarfed by the fact that the governments of the world have already sat back and watched the loss of Arctic ice guarantee climate mayhem – a loss already dramatically impacting the jet stream, which has become weaker and wavier (key factors enhancing the destructiveness of the recent superstorms) – without any perceptible sense of emergency. As former Nasa climate scientist James Hansen makes clear, the claim that leaders have done much of anything to address this genuinely existential threat is ‘bullshit’, a ‘fraud’.

There is no alarm, no sense of crisis. Our leaders have done nothing. Beyond platitudes, they have said nothing. Why not? Because they don’t exist. It is clear enough now that we, the people, in fact do not have representatives or leaders: we have puppets selected to respond to the needs of corporate interests for war and growth, and yet more growth. But if we are looking to someone in the cockpit to steer us away from the mountain of evidence of looming climate cataclysm, then there is no-one flying the plane. If we are looking to corporate media to recognise and respond to truth, then forget it – they have battened down the hatches, have excluded all but the most tepid dissent and have buried their heads in the sand.

So it’s up to you and us. Can anything be done? We genuinely do not know. But we do know that we cannot give up on everyone and everything we know and love; we cannot accept defeat. To give up on hope is to guarantee there is no hope. As the historian Howard Zinn said so well:

‘There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people’s thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.’ (Howard Zinn, A Power That Governments Can’t Suppress, City Lights, 2007, p.267)

On October 28, it was reported that within 72 hours three hate crimes killed two African-Americans in Kentucky, nail bombs were send to Democrats and to people who criticised Donald Trump. Finally, a man shouting anti-Semitic slurs opened fire inside a Pittsburgh synagogue, killing 11 people attending Jewish services. The men who committed these acts had one thing in common: they believed in conspiracy theories.

It is in this context that Christian Alt and Christian Schiffer have published their German-language book, Angela Merkel is Hitler’s daughter published by Carl Hanser Press. We have entered the age of “half-truths, fake news, paranoia, resentment and irrationality”, they write – and the age of conspiracy theories. The hallucination that Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, is “Hitler’s daughter” is one of the more laughable – albeit obscene and very dangerous – conspiracy theories. As a matter of fact, conspiracy theories are not really ‘theories’ at all.

Neither are they scientific. They are not a confirmed type of explanation about nature and society made in a way consistent with scientific methods. Conspiracy theories do not produce provable knowledge. As a consequence, they would better be labelled ‘conspiracy beliefs’ – or, even better, ‘conspiracy myths’. Their advantage, however, is that they appear to provide broad, internally consistent explanations that allow people to preserve beliefs in the face of uncertainty and contradictions.

With the rise of Facebook, etc, conspiracy myths seem to have developed their very own digital reality, which exists quite apart from analogue reality. Inside this digital space, a “large amount of bullshit” has been invented. In Germany it is no longer uncommon to hear conspiracy myths, such as “Secret forces created the refugee avalanche that is destroying our homeland”. There never was an avalanche. There are no secret forces. And refugees will not destroy our homeland.

Still, these are more than just dangerous misbeliefs. They are early signs of a rising fascism. Historically, the Nazi hallucination of a Jewish world conspiracy paved the way to Auschwitz. Today, conspiracy myths are high currency for nearly all rightwing politicians – and perhaps a few leftwing politicians as well. A clear indication of their ascendancy is the current occupant of the White House. Donald Trump is known to be a ‘birther’: ie, someone who believes that presideent Barack Obama did not have an American birth certificate.

Slightly less nuts but equally dangerous was the ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy. No, Hillary Clinton did not run a child pornography network in the back room of a pizza shop. Yet conspiracy mythologists claimed that ‘CP stands for Cheese Pizza, but it also means child pornography’. Perhaps – as one of the world’s key demagogues, Steve Bannon, says – “The story is more important than reality”. Existing separate from the mainstream press, conspiratorial stories are distributed widely through the internet without fact-checking, counter-arguments, editing, etc. With quality journalism being increasingly eliminated, ever more people seem to believe what they read on Facebook.

Conceivably, every new authoritarian regime comes with a new form of communication. Hitler had a radio called Volksempfänger (People’s Receiver). His ideological successors – today’s populists – have the internet (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc), via which “truthiness” (Stephen Colbert) is broadcast. One of the most hideous ‘truthinesses’ is the idea that ‘Obama was born in Kenya’. Today, many Americans still believe that.
In many cases, conspiracy myths work particularly well when they target individuals and small groups: Obama, Hillary Clinton, ‘witches who eat children, and Jews who poison wells and create Aids’. Conspiracy myths also mix well with romantic novels and sell millions of books. Today, many are created and broadcast by “bullshit factories”. These result in some Facebook users only seeing ‘truth’ as “echo chambers” or “mirror” of their own world view.

This is largely the case inside Germany’s crypto-Nazi party, the AfD (Alternative for Germany) – referred to by some as ‘A Fucking Disgrace’. The party has “by far more Facebook fans than party members” – 400,000 of them, compared to just under 30,000 members. A relatively high usage of Facebook was also found in the case of so-called Reichsbürger (sovereign citizen) Wolfgang P, who shot dead a policeman in 2016. Wolfgang P believed that “World War III was on the way, civilisation was breaking down and he had to defend his home”. His own particular conspiratorial hallucination had deadly consequences.

Here are a few other examples of conspiracy myths:
• Vaccination causes autism and smoke detectors listen to what we say.
• Che Guevara is the cousin of Ariel Sharon.
• Princess Diana only pretended to be dead.
• Michael Jackson had to die because he ‘rejected those in power’.
• The World Trade Center was blown up on George W Bush’s orders.
• 9/11 was a false flag attack organised by Dick Cheney.
• Israel and George Soros planned the war in Syria.
• Jews control the world.
• The holocaust never happened.
• The Rothschilds have already moved their gold to China.
• Anne Frank’s diaries are fakes.

The authors claim:
… women are more likely to believe in conspiracies compared to men and religious people are more likely than non-religious people to believe in them. Secondly, an increase of income comes with a decrease in believing in conspiracy theories.

While conspiracy myths have existed since feudal times and most likely even before that, one gets the impression that today, “whenever and wherever something exists, there is some sort of conspiracy myth” about it. Almost all conspiracy myths come with a hefty dose of paranoia as well as a circle-the-wagon feeling of “If you are with them, you cannot be with us”. Already those who utter the slightest possibility of disbelief are assessed as being “with them”.

What nearly all conspiracy myths have in common is their attempt to reduce complex social, economic and political issues to simple, black and white explanations. They explain them in a way that is easily understood. On the other hand, there are also some more elaborate conspiracy myths – and ‘Angela Merkel is Hitler’s daughter’ is among the best examples of those. Here it is:

Adolf Hitler died in a plane crash in the 1950s. But before that Hitler donated his sperm to Gretl Braun, the sister of Eva Braun. Eva Braun was the lover of the Führer. The insemination was successful and Gretl Braun gave birth to a girl called Angela. Angela is named after Eva Braun’s niece, Angela Maria ‘Geli’ Raubal.

This might sound laughable (actually it is), but, on the other hand, “more bullshit is always possible”, enriching the world of conspiracy theories on a daily level. Much of this applies to the motto, “Whatever excites and is outrageous will lead to more clicks … this is the e=mc2 of the internet.” Secondly, “‘True’ is whatever is good for us and our group.” A prime example was another particular conspiracy myth, one of the most hideous and dangerous examples: the infamous Protocols of the elders of Zion. Although shown to be a fake by the New York Times in 1921, its afterlife continued when Germany’s “Nazis distributed it massively during the 1920s”.
This conspiracy theory had extremely bitter consequences, ending in Auschwitz. Even today, “the protocols are still read and believed”, as the recent case of an AfD parliamentarian shows.

All this indicates that, as ridiculous as many such myths seem to be, “conspiracy theories have to be taken enormously serious”. Obviously, the people behind them never refer to themselves ‘conspiracy theorists’. They call themselves “truth seekers dedicated to enlightenment”. To be a conspiracy myth inventor, it is important to know that facts do not matter at all. What matters is the believability of a conspiracy.

Perhaps one of the true “masters of conspiracy theories was Adolf Hitler. He also believed in the protocols … similar tendencies can be detected in Donald Trump”.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/11/29/fake-news-and-conspiracy-myths/feed/0AN IRELAND UPDATE – SOUTH AND NORTHhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/11/23/12731/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/11/23/12731/#commentsFri, 23 Nov 2018 22:02:23 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12731We posting to articles from the Socialist Democracy (Ireland) website on the current political situation South and North. The first looks at the recent Presidential election; the second at the collapse of Stormont.

1. IRISH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: AN ELECTION WITHOUT CANDIDATES

Sinn Fein presidentail candidate. Liadh Ni Riada, appealing to the lowest common denominator in ‘A New Ireland’ – but no mention of Sinn Fein!

Throughout the presidential election one could only watch open mouthed as RTE, an organisation usually incapable of reporting real events, spent day after day in minute analysis of a nothing burger election.

The clear favourite was Michael D Higgins who has left his Labour Party days long behind to become a living figurehead representing more or less nothing. The other candidates were self-publicists and reality stars with the exception of the Sinn Fein candidate, Liadh Ní Riada, who successfully imitated the bland conservatism of her opponents. It is hardly a surprise that a minority of the population struggled to get as far as the polling booth as a wave of apathy swept the state.

Yet the election was useful in indicating the political temperature of the electorate. In the absence of politics Michael D was bound to be re-elected. It is a relief that the majority of the other independents came nowhere but what caused the greatest concern was the 25% vote for Peter Casey following his use of a racist dog whistle or rather fog horn in targeting the travelling community. Although the reformist left will not remember this, it was not so long ago that there was persistent boasting that their variety of left populism had at least saved Ireland from the right populism sweeping Europe. This election shows definitively that there is only populism and that it can veer left and right but left to itself will end up on the right. The only defence against populism and reaction is socialism. We should try it.

The election was a disaster for Sinn Fein and they blamed their candidate for going too far in her embrace of the poppy and conflict resolution with the British and unionists. Yet this is deeply worrying for Mary Lou – the Ni Riada line was her line and the line of Sinn Fein. It indicates that while former military figures such as McGuinness and Adams could get away with reactionary debasement to British royalty and their supporters could console themselves with the idea that they didn’t mean it, the new post-conflict leadership do not have the same leeway. The presidential election was supposed to be a launchpad for Sinn Fein for the next election. The result must be deeply worrying for them because it means that they will not make the breakthrough that will allow them supplant Fianna Fail or even guarantee them a place in a coalition government with the right-wing Fine Gael. In the absence of these things the Sinn Fein strategy is in danger of collapse. An even stronger indication of Sinn Fein’s incapacity was the way in which Sinn Fein voters spilt into three almost equal camps between Higgins, Casey and Ni Riada. This sort of division is typical of Sinn Fein over generations and indicates that they have never matured beyond a gaggle of different political tendencies held together by a loose nationalist sentiment.

However this political ambiguity makes it possible to make sharp changes in political direction. We can expect a revival of Sinn Fein the socialist party and a welcome back from the proponents of a broad left government.

The presidential election had no serious candidates because there is no effective political opposition in Ireland. If one ignores the vainglorious posts of the left about parliamentary advancement then left and right swirl around a common populist collaboration that leaves Ireland at the mercy of parasitic capitalist class and a rapacious imperialist domination.

The need for working class organisation, for a working class party has never been greater.

The political ideology in common currency concerning the North of Ireland – that there is no Assembly because the political parties do not agree and it is the fault of the politicians that services are failing – is on the point of collapse with the new Westminster legislation, introduced by British secretary of state Karen Bradley on 24th October, amending the law to allow civil servants to make decisions that would normally require political supervision and to remove the requirement in the Good Friday Agreement that elections have to be held following failure to construct an executive.

The blind spot in the lack of government theory is the fact that in no time in the two years since the failure of the local executive has the north of Ireland been without a government. Britain is the ultimate authority in the North of Ireland and has been the ultimate authority throughout the whole period before, during and after the Good Friday experiment and in the period since Stormont collapsed.

In an historical footnote to the current peace process the Westminster legislation will come to mark the date when the Good Friday Agreement collapsed. The whole point of the changes is to continue the increasingly threadbare fiction of a political process that hides an invisible direct rule. The civil servants given new roles smokescreen the fact that they will be directed by Bradley. No one questions this strange arrangement even though the senior officials involved have been shown (in the evidence presented at the Renewable Heat Incentive enquiry) to be unable to carry out the basic functions of their jobs.

Just how reactionary the process is, is indicated by the fact that the government fought off an attempt to correct the fundamentalist denial of abortion rights in the North while continuing to deny their responsibility for the lack of rights.

What history will have to explain is the bizarre reality of Irish politics in which the British – nor any of the Irish parties – will not acknowledge that direct rule has returned. In the case of the Dublin government and Sinn Fein it is because they have lost out to Britain and can’t oppose the present policy without drawing attention to their own failure. The unionists are silent because they have themselves rejected devolution and the British government are effectively carrying out the policy that they support.

In the North this ideology of denial is exemplified by the claim that services are under attack because of the lack of a local administration. Proponents of this sort of argument include the local trade union leadership who operate through a model that equates non sectarianism with neutrality. Where this ends up is support for the status-quo and the promotion of the idea that working the system by lobbying the local administration is a way to achieve gains for their members. In fact the Stormont administration has no record of any form of progressive administration or social justice, spending it’s days mired in sectarian horse trading and corruption. The union leaders carried this sort of ideology so far that they accepted widespread austerity and welfare cuts as the price of preserving the Stormont administration. Close sympathisers of the trade union movement even collaborated in operating the mitigation schemes that helped ease in the cuts.

So the harsh austerity and welfare cuts were agreed by the DUP and Sinn Fein and are part of the wider Tory welfare offensive that is rolling out unopposed because both the unions and political parties have accepted it. The actual role of direct rule in this process is that the British are operating a policy of “old king log”, implementing policy only when they require it and allowing problems to build up either because it speeds up the austerity process or because it builds up pressure on Sinn Fein to return to the administration.

The result is a zombie society. Workers are facing an unending assault yet they continue to cling desperately to their respective parties and to the trade union leadership even though the political parties and the union bureaucracy are unable and unwilling to defend them. The result is a sort of Trumpian dream where things that are clearly untrue are accepted as gospel. So for example we are told that the absence of the administration is because the parties cannot agree when the truth is that Sinn Fein made a humiliating agreement that the DUP refused to honour. There are small demonstrations (#wedeservebetter) calling for the return of the executive, even though that would involve accepting the open and public corruption of the DUP and the sectarian reaction that makes up their programme.

Yet the decay of the Good Friday Agreement extends well beyond the absence of an executive. Most of the accompanying structures are no longer functioning. The British are avoiding any consultation with the Irish government, have consistently torn up elements of the agreement to operate undeclared direct rule and have embarked upon a frenzy of English chauvinism, declaring for the unity of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, rejecting any possibility of Irish unity and ruling out any further questioning of the Dirty War that they fought in Ireland or the impunity given to its armed forces.

This is both a cause and a consequence of the Brexit movement in Britain. The most likely outcome of Brexit is a hard border in Ireland and return to the ‘50s inside that border as economic activity shrinks even further towards that of a peripheral region. The Brexit story shows up the incapacity of Irish politics today. Opposition seems in most cases to involve support for the European Union, an entity that was responsible for the utterly harsh austerity inflicted on Ireland to pay banks and bondholders. Sinn Fein, once the party of revolutionary nationalism, finds itself unable to advocate for a united Ireland as a self-evident solution to the crisis and instead calls for a border poll inside the structures of a largely non-existent Good Friday Agreement.

At some point the growing crisis and contradictions of a failed political settlement will lead to the disintegration of the current structures and of the political and trade union leaderships that support the settlement. Never has the need for a working class party, a working class political program, and a fighting trade union structure been more evident.

JohnMaclean100 was formed by Gavin Paterson and Alan Smart, with the help of a small group of musicians, in late October 2018.

We believe that protest sings can make a greater impact than even the best of speeches, and nowhere is this truer than in the case of educator, social justice activity, peace campaigner, and revolutionary, John Maclean. His legacy over the years has been kept alive by songwriters more than by politicians or well funded heritage organisations.

The JohnMaclean100 website proves this, and will be a permanent, ever growing and living monument to John Maclean 100 years on from his return tae the Clyde from Peterhead prison on December 3rd 1918 John Maclean Day.

Enter stage left, John Maclean, but for a few songs, the forgotten world revolutionary leader of 1918. The third of December 1918 to be precise. When everything was possible , and Maclean and the people of Glasgow had the guts to try

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/11/23/johnmaclean100/feed/0RENEGING ON REPEAL: A NEW THREAT TO ABORTION RIGHTS IN IRELANDhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/11/23/reneging-on-repeal-a-new-threat-to-abortion-rights-in-ireland/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/11/23/reneging-on-repeal-a-new-threat-to-abortion-rights-in-ireland/#commentsFri, 23 Nov 2018 21:24:00 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12710This article, first posted by Socialist Democracy (Ireland) on the situation in Ireland following the earlier successful repeal of the 8th amendment highlights the need to organise independently of the state.

RENEGING ON REPEAL: A NEW THREAT TO ABORTION RIGHTS IN IRELAND

After a period of quiet relief following the repeal referendum the struggle around abortion rights is returning to the political agenda. The effect of the referendum was simply to remove abortion from the constitution and make it an issue for legislation.

It is now becoming evident that government proposals will be quite restrictive and that the battle will resume in the Dail when legislation is brought forward shortly. There is another issue that will not go to the Dail but is being settled in quiet negotiation between Fine Gael health minister Simon Harris and the Catholic Church about the transfer of ownership of the new maternity hospital to a private company controlled by the church. The nuns have made it clear that their ethos will prevail within the new company. Aside from the massive privatisation giveaway new legislative proposals that include a conditional freedom of conscience for medical practitioners means that abortion rights for the majority of women could be easily blocked.

Those who believe that Ireland is now post Catholic are very much mistaken. For quite some time the church has been retreating behind private shell companies that are replacing direct church control in healthcare. Private companies will remain within the Catholic ethos and the church state relationship that lies at the heart of the 26 County state is reinforced as the partners act to bring forward the mass privatisation of public services including healthcare.

In this case a 350 million euro hospital has been handed over to the church. This will directly affect the supposed “abortion on demand” 12 week period of early pregnancy. The process will be subject to medical supervision and it is proposed that it will require a scan which will only be available from one of the maternity hospitals.
The result will be class discrimination. Private consultants and gynaecologists will insure access to abortion without any difficulty for those with the money to pay while obstacles to treatment will remain for the working class.

On the 20th of October feminists met in Dublin in an educational conference to discuss the issue. As a result of the conference a statement was issued:

The Declaration below was unanimously adopted at the Education Day of the Campaign against Church Ownership of Women’s Healthcare on Sat 20th Oct 2018.

“We demand that the National Maternity Hospital be taken into public ownership as a condition of public funding; that the €350 million earmarked for the new build be conditional on this change of ownership; and that the new maternity hospital be governed by a new, secular charter fit for the 21st century.”

“We call on all individuals, organizations and groups who supported Repeal to sign and actively support the declaration.”

https://uplift.ie/national-maternity-hospital-campaign/

It is of vital importance that those forces who mobilised around the repeal movement now return to action to ensure that abortion rights become a reality.

RIC Edinburgh has agreed to organise a contingent on the march to
emphasise RIC’s Scottish republicanism, internationalism and diversity.

We have new banners for the event including –

Another Scotland Is Possible, Another Europe Is Possible, Another World Is PossibleFor an Independent Scotland – Freedom Come All Ye – For Scottish InternationalismFor a Democratic, Secular, Inclusive, Sustainable, Social Scottish Republic

We will have Catalan flags and Palestine flags and welcome others too.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/10/04/all-under-one-banner-demo-edinburgh-october-6th/feed/0REVIEW: BALLYMURPHY PRECEDENT (Channel Four)http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/10/03/review-massacre-at-ballymurphy-channel-four/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/10/03/review-massacre-at-ballymurphy-channel-four/#commentsWed, 03 Oct 2018 21:06:30 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12706The following review from Socialist Democracy (Ireland) is of the film Ballymurphy Precedent made by Callum Macrae for Channel Four.

A HIDDEN HISTORY OF BRITISH MILITARY REPRESSION AGAINST CIVILIANS

The Ballymurphy massacre has the simplest of all dramatic structures. It is a narrative built around a chronology – a three-day assault by the British Army on a Belfast housing estate following the introduction of internment that left ten unarmed civilians dead and many others badly injured. This story is told through a mixture of stock footage, interviews, re-enactment of events and documentary evidence.

For all its simplicity the tale the film has to tell is utterly convincing and devastating in its impact. There are many shocking details. It was well known that loyalist paramilitaries had been involved in attacks and in fact one group, the Ulster Volunteer Force, recently claimed to have fired into the area. What becomes clear from the details in the film is that even this early in the conflict the loyalists were operating in coordination with the paratroops, drawing out local people by attacking their homes in order that military snipers operating from behind and above the loyalist gangs could mow down the locals.

It is also clear from the account that the soldiers could have no doubt that they were shooting at unarmed civilians, that they shot anyone who tried to rescue the injured, and as a number of the victims were not fatally injured but bled to death as they lay for hours under a hail of fire. In one case there is a witness and forensic evidence of an injured civilian having the coup de grace delivered by having a pistol fired twice into the back of his head at short range.

Yet Ballymurphy is the hidden massacre, forgotten while the same groups of soldiers, using the same methods at the civil rights march in Derry, provoked mass protests across the world.

What we find is that there was more to Ballymurphy than simply the killing fields. Michael Jackson, later to become head of the British Army, was operating as press officer in the area and disseminated a story of a ferocious gun battle between the provisional IRA and the paratroopers. The local Unionist press took up the story. The tale was followed by a perfunctory inquests that simply recorded the cause of death of the victims. These were accompanied by statements by the soldiers of coming under a barrage of fire and firing in self-defence. One soldier spoke of a middle-aged grandmother moving about a field and attacking him with a machine gun. In fact there was no evidence of a gun battle. No weapons, no rounds, not even empty shell cases were recovered from this battle. The army may well have expected that the IRA would return fire but details of internment raids were well known and the IRA had dispersed to safe houses.

What we find is that the same soldiers using the same methods, and with the same stories of imaginary gun battles, only months later were to carry out the slaughter at the Derry civil rights march, this time with a large amount of British whitewash absolving the troops in the form of the Widgery Report.

How did this happen? To a certain extent the issue is left open. Former soldiers report how welcoming Catholic residents were demonised and defined as the enemy and of the role of the paratroops in terrorising areas. There is some discussion of the involvement of Brigadier Frank Kitson and his use of the paratroopers and Greenjackets as an instrument of pacification. There is also reporting of rivalry inside the British Army, with the Belfast regiments declaring a policy of no barricades and no no-go areas and looking down on the Derry troops who were unable to enter the Bogside.

Kitson is famous for his book Low Intensity Operations but it is important to realise that this simply translates into methods for suppressing largely unarmed civilians and that he was one of a number of officers who had used methods of mass repression in Kenya and Aden. The British government had consciously decided that they were facing a mass upsurge and to preserve partition and the Stormont government they would have to use the methods that they had used previously other colonial situations. The problem with this conclusion is that the only possible political resolution to the massacres of Ballymurphy and Derry is the expulsion of Britain from Ireland. These have been a constant feature of the British presence in Ireland and they will be so in the future if further resistance arises.

The film gives us unwavering admiration for the relatives of the dead who have struggled over decades to find justice. However we have become used to relatives leading these campaigns. Where are the political parties?

The initial group to gain world attention was the mothers of the plaza de Mayo, an Argentinian group protested their disappeared children because all political groups and political activity were repressed by the Argentinian generals. The prominent place of relatives of today is because Sinn Fein is shy. They accepted the Saville Report, which ruled out any government policy of repression in favour of indiscipline by soldiers A to F. The fact is that Sinn Fein now support a political settlement based on the idea that the British are humanitarians interested in supporting democracy and eventually promoting a United Ireland. In those circumstances they have no problem in lining up to shake the hand of Prince Charles, Colonel in chief of the Paratroop Regiment.

The narrative of the Ballymurphy massacre proves this is rubbish and that we are living in a dreamland. As a result of the decades of ferocious violence deployed by the British we are living in a dreary corrupt and sectarian failed state and the threat of violence will remain as long as the British do.

10.9.18

This was first posted at:- http://socialistdemocracy.org/RecentArticles/RecentReviewMassacreAtBallymurphy.html

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/10/03/review-massacre-at-ballymurphy-channel-four/feed/2THE IHRA AND APARTHEID ISRAELhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/10/03/the-ihra-and-apartheid-israel/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/10/03/the-ihra-and-apartheid-israel/#respondWed, 03 Oct 2018 20:08:10 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12702We are posting three pieces following the Labour Party’s adoption of the IHTA statement on Anti-Semitism. the first is by Moshe Machover, founder member of the socialist Matzpen Party in Israel, who successfully resisted a joint Zionist and Labour Right attempt to have him expelled from the Labour Party. The second is by a Shahd Abuslama, a Palestinian artist at Sheffield University. The third is a statement from Radical Independence Campaign’s Edinburgh branch.

1. WHY ISRAEL IS A RACIST STATE

Moshe Machover

That Israel is a racist state is a well-established fact. On July On July 19 2018, it enacted a quasi-constitutional nationality bill – ‘Basic law: Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people’ – which has been widely condemned as institutionalising discrimination against Israel’s non-Jewish citizens. As many have observed, this law merely codifies and formalises a reality that long predates it.(1)

Within its pre-1967 borders, Israel is an illiberal semi-democracy. It defines itself as “Jewish and democratic”, but, as its critics point out, it is “democratic for Jews, Jewish for others”. In the territories ruled by it since 1967, Israel is a military tyranny, applying one system of laws and regulations to Jewish settlers and an entirely separate one to the indigenous Palestinian Arabs.

The ways in which Israel exercises racist discrimination are too numerous to list here. Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, lists over 65 Israeli laws that discriminate directly or indirectly against Palestinian citizens in Israel and/or Palestinian residents of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). In addition to these laws there are countless unofficial bureaucratic practices and regulations, by which Israeli racist discrimination operates in everyday life.
The conclusion cannot be denied: the state of Israel is structurally racist, an apartheid state according to the official UN definition of this term.

Shocking comparison
In Israeli public discourse, racist speech is extremely common even at the highest echelon of politics. Some of this high-level racist discourse is almost casual, such as Benjamin Netanyahu’s infamous “Arabs voting in droves” video (2) on election day, March 17 2015; or the “we are not Arab lovers” declaration of Isaac Herzog, leader of Israel’s Labor Party. (3) At the most obscene end of the range there are statements by senior politicians containing barely concealed calls for ethnic cleansing.

Some of the harshest condemnation of Israel’s racism is voiced by two Israeli academics, who, as recognised experts on the history of fascism and Nazism, speak with considerable authority.
Professor Zeev Sternhell is emeritus head of the department of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of the world’s leading experts on fascism. In an article published earlier this year, he referred to statements made by two senior Israeli politicians, members of the ruling coalition, Bezalel Smotrich (deputy speaker of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament) and Miki Zohar (chair of one of the Knesset’s most important committees). These statements, Sternhell writes (4), “should be widely disseminated on all media outlets in Israel and throughout the Jewish world. In both of them we see not just a growing Israeli fascism, but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.”

This shocking comparison with Nazism is endorsed by Daniel Blatman, professor of history at the Daniel Blarman Hebrew University of Jerusalem, whose book The death marches: the final phase of Nazi genocide won him in 2011 the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research. In an article published last year he commented: “deputy speaker Bezalel Smotrich’s admiration for the biblical genocidaire, Joshua bin Nun, leads him to adopt values that resemble those of the German SS.” (5)
Blatman returned to this topic in a more recent article:

Deputy Knesset speaker MK Bezalel Smotrich … presented his phased plan, according to which the Palestinians in the occupied territories (and possibly Israeli citizens, too) would become, in the best case, subjects without rights with a status that reminds us of German Jews after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. To the extent that they do not agree to the plan, they will simply be cleansed from here. If they refuse to leave, they will be uprooted violently, which would lead to genocide.

Another elected official from the ruling coalition, Likud’s Miki Zohar, did not hesitate to state that the Arabs have a problem that has no solution – they are not Jews and therefore their fate in this land cannot be the same as that of the Jews .… Prof Zeev Sternhell wrote in this paper earlier this month that this racism is “akin to Nazism in its early stages.” I think it is Nazism in every way and fashion, even if it comes from the school of the victims of historical Nazism.

He concludes that “if a racism survey were held in western countries like the one on anti-Semitism, Israel would be near the top of the list.” (6)

Role of racism
Exposing Israel’s racism is all too easy. Mere denunciation, without explanation of its underlying context, may actually be misleading if not counterproductive; it may appear as singling Israel out for some peculiar and exceptional moral defect of its leaders or, worse, of its Jewish majority. In fact, racist structures and attitudes, wherever they occur, are part of the legal and ideological superstructure and cannot properly be understood in isolation from their material base.

In the case of Israel, that material base is the Zionist colonisation of Palestine – a process of which Israel is both product and instrument. That the Zionist project is all about the colonisation of Palestine by Jews is, once again, an indisputable fact. It is how political Zionism described itself right from the start. Thus, the second Zionist Congress (1898) adopted the following resolution (supplementing the Basel programme adopted at the first Congress a year earlier):
This Congress, in approval of the colonisation already inaugurated in Palestine, and being desirous of fostering further efforts in that direction, hereby declares, that:

For the proper settlement of Palestine, this Congress considers it is necessary to obtain the requisite permission from the Turkish government, and to carry out such settlement according to the plan, and under the direction of a committee, selected by this Congress ….This committee to be appointed to superintend and direct all matters of colonisation; it shall consist of ten members, and have its seat in London. (7)

The Congress also resolved to establish a bank to finance the activities of the Zionist movement. The bank was duly incorporated in London in 1899; its name was the Jewish Colonial Trust.8) Well into the 20th century, Zionists continued to describe their project unabashedly, in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, as one of colonisation. Later in the 20th century this usage became a public relations liability, and the term was replaced by various euphemisms. But the practice of colonisation of Palestinian land has continued unabated and is going ahead at full steam to this day.

This context makes Israel’s racism quite ‘natural’, in the sense of conforming to a general law. Every colonisation of an already inhabited territory is accompanied by racism. This is the case whether or not the colonisers arrive with preconceivedracist ideas. Colonisation invariably meets resistance by the indigenous people. This was clearly understood, for example, by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940), the founder of the Zionist current that has been politically dominant in Israel for the last 41 years. In his seminal article ‘The iron wall’ (1923) he wrote:

“Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of ‘Palestine’ into the ‘Land of Israel’ .…

Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim. It lies in the very nature of things, and in this particular regard nature cannot be changed.

Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power [ie, Britain – MM] that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach”. (9)

In their conflict with the ‘natives’, the settlers tend to develop a racist ideology as self-justification.
We can say more. Racism in general comes in many different variants, and colonisers’ racism takes different forms, depending on the type of colonisation. In colonisation based primarily on exploiting the labour-power of the indigenous people, the latter are usually depicted by the colonisers as inferior creatures deserving no better fate than working for their conquerors.

But in colonisation based on excluding and displacing the ‘natives’ rather than incorporating them into the colonial economy as workers, they are usually depicted as dangerous wild and murderous people who ought to be ethnically cleansed. Zionist colonisation belongs to this category. In this respect, it is not unlike the colonisation of what became the United States, except that the Zionist organisation insisted explicitly and deliberately on denying employment to non-Jews. (10)

In the US Declaration of Independence, the freedom-loving founding fathers – only some of whom were slave owners – complain that the king of Great Britain “has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” In today’s terminology they would no doubt be described as ‘terrorists’. The Palestinian Arabs are Israel’s “merciless Indian savages”.

When viewed against the background of the history of this type of colonisation, Israeli racist ideology and practices are par for the course. The annals of colonisation certainly have grimmer chapters, such as the total extermination of the people of Tasmania, to mention an extreme example. Zionist colonisation is, however, exceptional in being anachronistic: it continues in the 21st century the kind of thing – settler colonialism – that elsewhere ended in the 19th.

To conclude: apart from its anachronism, there is little that is exceptional about Israel’s racism. It is rooted in its nature as a settler state. Uprooting colonialist racism requires a change of regime, decolonisation – which in the case of Israel means de-Zionisation. (11)

References

1. ↑ Thus, for example, Bernie Sanders remarked in passing that “the recent ‘nation state law’ … essentially codifies the second-class status of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens”. (‘A new authoritarian axis demands an international progressive front’, The Guardian, 13 September 13 2018).
2. ↑ “The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them in buses.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/17/binyamin-netanyahu-israel-arab-election
3. ↑ ‘We are not Arab lovers – Israeli Labor’s bankrupt efforts to stave off decline’, Middle East Eye, 25 April 2016, https://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/when-israels-main-opposition-party-has-problem-countrys-palestinian-citizens-1878921672
4. ↑ ‘In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism’, Ha’aretz January 19 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-in-israel-growing-fascism-and-a-racism-akin-to-early-nazism-1.5746488?=&ts=_1537002401268
5. ↑ ‘The Israeli Lawmaker Heralding Genocide Against Palestinians’, Ha’aretz May 23 2017, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-israeli-mk-heralding-genocide-against-palestinians-1.5475561. The biblical reference is to the book of Joshua, which contains a mythical account of the conquest and ethnic cleansing of the land of Canaan (Palestine) by the Israelites. The account is of course purely fictitious, but is taken as inspiration and virtual blueprint by the likes of Smotrich
6. ↑ ‘International Holocaust Remembrance Day: An Israeli Hypocrisy’, Ha’aretz January 28 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-international-holocaust-remembrance-day-an-israeli-hypocrisy-1.5768945
7. ↑ www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2612-basel-program
8. ↑ www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-colonial-trust
9. ↑ ‘The iron wall’ (O Zheleznoi stene), published November 4 1923 in the Russian-language journal Rassvyet (Dawn); English translation https://tinyurl.com/m8dp3le
10. ↑ See the 1929 constitution of the Jewish Agency, https://tinyurl.com/ycq3nqpo
11. ↑ See my article ‘The decolonisation of Palestine’, Weekly Worker June 23 2016, https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1112/the-decolonisation-of-palestine/

25/9/18

This was first posted at:-

http://labourpartymarxists.org.uk/

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2. THE IHRA ANTI-SEMITISM DEFINITION WON’T PTOTECT ISRAELI APARTHEID

Shahd Abusalama

History will judge Israel’s apologists the way Theresa May is now judged on apartheid South Africa.

The International Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) anti-Semitism code in full, including its list of 11 examples, means it now considers calling Israel “racist” a potentially racist act.

But the reality is that since the foundation of Israel – beginning with David Ben-Gurion’s “Drive them out!” order to the Palmach in the 1948 Nakba – racial oppression of Palestinians has been the norm.

As Palestinian freedom fighter Ahed Tamimi has observed, Israel is afraid of this truth being known. And by adopting the full IHRA definition, Labour is helping to stifle it.

But we shouldn’t be surprised: UK politicians have a long and inglorious history of protecting states practising apartheid. Notably, they have never been held to account for their support for white rule in South Africa.

We were reminded of this recently when Prime Minister Theresa May visited Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and many other anti-apartheid activists were imprisoned for decades.

When asked what she had done to hasten Mandela’s release and the end of minority rule in South Africa, she squirmed awkwardly, before claiming “what was important is what the United Kingdom did”.

What the British government – and May’s Conservative Party – did was not only fail to support Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) but actively support the apartheid South African regime for years.

Following the 1970 UK election, Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath pledged to end the arms embargo on South Africa and resume military equipment sales to the apartheid government.

In the same era, an aspiring young politician – future Prime Minister David Cameron – went on an all-expenses-paid trip to South Africa courtesy of an anti-sanctions lobbying firm, whilemembers of the Federation of Conservative Students went as far as wearing”Hang Nelson Mandela” stickers.

The UK is as deeply complicit in Israel’s apartheid system as it was in South African apartheid, if not more so.

Adoption of the IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism by the Labour Party – and the Conservative government, nine months ago – is just the tip of the iceberg.

From its historical role in smoothing a course for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by issuing the Balfour Declaration to its contemporary arms sales to Israel, when it comes to Palestine the UK stays true to its colonial past.

Israel is afforded impunity despite its multiple crimes, such as the killing of over 160 Palestinians in Gaza since the Great March of Return began. The UK seeks to protect Israel from accountability in global forums like the United Nations, for example by refusing to vote for an independent investigation into the killing of 60 Palestinians on May 14 this year, a massacre dubbed the “Palestinian Sharpeville” after the 1960 murder of 69 black protesters by South African apartheid security forces.

Regardless of Israel’s long-standing disregard for international law and grave human rights violations, Britain even gifted it a royal stamp of approval in June when Prince William made a symbolic visit to the country, contravening seven decades of British policy against official royal visits to Israel.

History is repeating itself. Just as the UK government shielded South African apartheid in the past, it is giving political, economic and military support to Israeli apartheid today. In 2017 alone, the UK government granted more than 289 million British pounds-worth ($375.3m) of licenses for the export of arms and military technology to Israel.

But in the end, British support didn’t protect South African apartheid from the reach of justice and equality. Similarly, the IHRA won’t protect Israel’s ethnocracy.

Palestinians and their allies will continue to name the racial oppression they face under Israel for what it is – a system of apartheid. And history is already beginning to repeat itself in another, more positive, sense.

Just as a powerful global boycott movement helped make South Africa a pariah state – in the process making a vital contribution to ending apartheid – the Palestinian BDS campaign is following in its footsteps.

The BDS movement understands that freedom, justice and equality will not be handed down from above by the very same politicians who have tolerated Israeli apartheid for so long. It can only be won by pushing from the grassroots up.

Thirty years from now, British politicians will be asked what they did to end Israeli apartheid. And though the UK’s complicity will no doubt be similarly whitewashed, history will judge Israel’s apologists the way Theresa May is judged now on South Africa.

The Labour Party has accepted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-semitism. This represents a significant blow to anti-racists. The IHRA is an interstate organisation with a membership of only 31 out of the UN’s 193 states. Several of these are allies and arms suppliers to Israel. Other IHRA member states with a past and current record of domestic anti-semitism, such as Hungary and Poland, use their international support for Israel as a cover for their own racism. This is something quite acceptable to the Israeli state. Israel’s PM, Benjamin Netanyahu backs Hungary’s PM, Victor Orban. He openly supports “a Christian Europe”, to which the even further Right add a “White” prefix.

Israel an apartheid-type racist state – the Palestinians an oppressed people

In the 1930s and ’40s, many Jewish people living in Europe increasingly saw Palestine as a haven from the mounting anti-semitism that culminated in the holocaust and the death of 6 million Jews and many others in Nazi death camps. The UK and other governments’ lack of concern for Jewish people was highlighted when it severely clamped down on Jewish asylum seekers fleeing Nazi Germany in the aftermath of Kristallnacht in 1938, the mass killings following invasion of eastern Europe in 1941 and then the death camps set up after the Wannsee conference in 1942. Not able to gain entry into the UK or the USA, some tried to make it to British-controlled Palestine, only to be drowned at sea. This is similar to the situation facing today’s mainly Muslim refugees and migrants, who try to cross the Mediterranean. Many thousands have lost their lives. The UK has naval bases at Gibraltar and Cyprus, but these are there to back British military force in the region, not to rescue the victims of imperial actions and corporate greed.

But the explicit aim of Israel’s founders was to create a Jewish supremacist state, in complete disregard for the overwhelming majority of people already living in Palestine. That is racist to its core. The method adopted was colonial settlement, backed by force. In 1948, Israel was founded through terrorism and the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians – the Naqba. Ever since Israel’s foundation, Palestinians have been systematically discriminated against, expelled from their homes, imprisoned, shot at, tortured and killed.

All Israel’s discriminatory actions, laws and now the latest nationality law, which gives state racism a constitutional status, highlight its reality as an apartheid-type state. The murder on one day this year, May 14th, of 60 demonstrators in Gaza has been termed the Palestinian ‘Sharpeville’. This is in memory of the 69 black protestors killed by South African apartheid security forces in 1960. The parallels are only too clear. Would Labour have tolerated a Labour Friends of Apartheid South Africa? Yet the Israeli state was also one of the strongest supporters of Apartheid South Africa. This explains why, ever since the overthrow of Apartheid, South Africa has been to the forefront of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS). This is designed to emulate the Boycott Apartheid South Africa campaign, which contributed to the ending of the old regime there. RIC-Edinburgh, on the basis of our Scottish internationalist principles, supports the BDS campaign.

By accepting the IHRA’s definition of anti-semitism, rejected by 40 different Jewish organisations in 15 countries, a Labour Party member could now be expelled for declaring Israel to be what it is – a racist state. However, this is not just an issue for the Labour Party. It is part of the continuous Israeli state offensive to give it a free hand in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, or their confinement to the ‘bantustan’ of the much-reduced West Bank and the ‘ghetto’ or mass prison camp of Gaza.

People who have spoken up against Israeli state crimes have been targeted by various Jewish supremacist or Zionist organisations, which in the Labour Party include the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI). Not all Zionists are Jews. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are prominent members of LFI. Non-Jewish Right-wingers find much to support in Israel. However, neither are all Jews Zionists, despite the claims of the Tory dominated Board of Deputies and the Labour Friends of Israel to speak for all Jews. We admire the Jewish Friends of Palestine and other Jewish organisations, which have shown their opposition to the racist nature of the Israeli state and its many crimes against the Palestinian and neighbouring peoples.

Scottish unionist Lord Balfour’s record of anti-semitism and the UK’s handling of refugees fleeing repression

Neither can we ignore the UK state’s role in the founding of Israel. It was the Scottish Conservative and Unionist, Lord Balfour who drew up the Balfour Declaration 1917. This cynical exercise promised a ‘Jewish Homeland’ in a Palestine, which had already been promised to Arabs for their support in the First World War against the Ottoman Empire. Nobody consulted the people living in Palestine.

Balfour had a record, both when it came to clearing people off the land and promoting anti-semitism. In 1885 as Scottish Secretary he sent gunboats to Tiree to quell crofters seeking security on their land. The following year, Balfour became the Irish Secretary. Once again he used force, this time to quell Irish tenant farmers, earning the name ‘Bloody Balfour’. In 1905, Balfour, as Home Secretary, introduced the Aliens Act, which targeted Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in Tsarist Russia. British supporters of the Balfour Declaration often wanted poor Jews to leave the UK and settle in Palestine. Again the link between anti-semitism at home and support for a Jewish state elsewhere is clear.

Today amongst the tens of thousands of refugees fleeing repression are Palestinians. Israel has created a ‘hostile environment’, which Theresa May can only envy. And the UK government remains a major supplier of arms to the Jewish supremacist state of Israel and the Islamic supremacist state of Saudi Arabia adding to the misery. We support the work of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which has Moslem, Jewish, Christian and non-religious members and promotes Palestinian self-determination on democratic, secular and anti-racist grounds.

British racists welcome Israel’s ethnic self-definition

Racist loudmouth, Katie Hopkins, Islamophobic Tory MP, Zac Goldsmith, suspended DUP MP Ian Paisley Junior, and neo-fascist Tommy Robinson support Israel’s self-definition as an ethnocracy. They clearly see this as a precedent for their own versions of an ethnic Britishness. Both Gordon Brown and Michael Gove worked on ethnic/ cultural tests before migrants can become British. David Cameron’s restricted franchise for the EU referendum revealed the extent of the UK’s acceptance of ethnic criteria for British nationality. On 12th September, all but one of the Tory MEPs voted at Strasbourg against Orban’s Hungarian government being sanctioned. Both Orban and May support apartheid Israel.

Defending a civic nation in Scotland

In Scotland we have another important reason for rejecting the IHRA’s acceptance of racial or ethnic nationalism. During IndyRef1 the ‘Yes’ campaign championed a civic Scotland, open to all who choose to live here – including Muslims and Jews. The franchise for IndyRef 1 included all EU residents and 16-18 year olds. This was in marked contrast to the ethnic franchise for the Tories’ 2015 EU referendum. On the 6th September, as the Labour Party accepted Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish ethnocracy. Nicola Sturgeon announced that any future IndyRef2 will be open to all residents who choose Scotland as their home. We welcome this. In rejecting the IHRA and its apologists, we support the idea and reality of Scotland as a civic nation.

RIC-Edinburgh seeks to break free from the clutches of the UK state, its British imperialist delusions, and its support for ethnic or religious supramacist regimes. Another Scotland is possible; another Europe is possible; and another world is possible.

He came, he saw and, well, he addressed congregations considerably smaller than those prophesied, talked to representative of the many individuals assaulted by officials of his bureaucracy and went back to Rome. During his stay, he expressed strong distaste for the holy perverts, but did not announce any positive steps to deal with them. Of course, he could be trying to play a long game, but the question here is whether such a game is winnable.

Already, the enemy is surrounding him. The letter by archbishop Vigano is aimed if not to force him to abdicate, then to discredit him and destroy the moral authority he needs to deal adequately with the pestilence. It is the old technique of suggesting that ‘sure, everyone has been doing it’, along with the all too common confusion of homosexuality and pederasty. In this clash, Francis is, no doubt, the lesser of the two evils, but if he is serious, his chances of succeeding are considerably less than even. His enemies are protected by layers of dogma drafted originally to deal with problems of earlier and very different ages but now maintained as eternal truths. In any case, it is not for this homepage to make calls for action for the Catholic Church to reform itself, even if it would listen. Concern is with the secular powers.

Of these powers, the Government and its head are the most significant. For the media, the Taoiseach’s speech of welcome covered him in glory. It was certainly less sycophantic than, for example, John Bruton’s welcome (’You are everything we aspire to’) to the Prince of Wales. Nor did he display his socks to the pontiff, in public, at least. Nonetheless, he shared with Francis a denial of analysis and a resultant refusal to prescribe solutions. Clerical abuse just happened.

Everyone besides the clergy were to blame. The ‘people’ along with the priests are properly contrite and the people’s Government can continue with its policies as before. This ignores the whole question of Church-State relations. There need be no pressure on the Church to pay the amount outstanding from what it agreed to pay in compensation. Schools will continue to be run by clerical managers. As for the hospitals, well, the new National Maternity Hospital is to be run by the Sisters of Charity who we must hope will show a more compassionate standard of care than they did to the inmates of the Magdalen Laundries.

Varadkar’s double game is an attempt to continue, in the face of evident failure, the strategy of neo-liberalism. To maintain its economic strategy of free markets, it offers Lefties progressive policies in the social sphere. In Ireland especially, this means turning on the old defender of class privilege, the Catholic Church and its privileges.

There are several problems with this. Firstly, the most popular social reforms under this heading are achieved. Perhaps clerical ownership of schools and hospitals will keep enthusiasm high on this front, but it does not seem to have the potential of the repeal of the 8th Amendment. Secondly, this clerical ownership is not just about the principle of subsidiarity taken up by the Church to justify it. It is also copper fastened by factors far more sacred to net-liberals than any religious dogma, political economy and its base in property ownership. Though clerical control is not actually cheaper than direct democratic control, it is believed widely to be so and is in keeping with the principle dear to neo-liberal hearts of public-private partnership. In addition, its supporters claim that it is defended in the constitution, which would mean considerable expense, legal and political in removing it

In any case there are clear signs that the neo-liberal project is exhausted. The misery it has been inflicting on the working people is not balanced by its social changes. In fact the new right is targeting that social enlightenment as being a factor causing the liberals’ economic failures, and to use revived repressive demands to cover the fact that they will maintain the ’free’ market that is the real cause of these failures. This is most obvious in connection with the matter of immigration, but this is just one part of potential socio-political regression.

The left movement remains in shards, its parts too inclined to political narcissism. It is overdue for it to unite on the slogan ’the problem is not the migrants but the market’.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/09/20/frankie-goes-to-ireland/feed/2FRENCH POSTAL WORKERS INTERNATIONAL STRIKE FUNDhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/09/14/french-postal-workers-international-strike-fund/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/09/14/french-postal-workers-international-strike-fund/#commentsFri, 14 Sep 2018 08:39:43 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12692French workers remain one of the best organised groups in Europe. This is why Macron has launched attacks on the rail workers (see http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/04/14/french-public-sector-workers-under-attack/) and the postal workers. The organised French working class offers the best alternative to the neo-liberalism of Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche and the rampant national chauvinist, racist Right populism of Marine Le Pen’s Fronte National. The post workers have been on strike since March. We are publishing this appeal.

FRENCH POSTAL WORKERS INTERNATIONAL STRIKE FUND

French Postal Workers are locked in a fight to the death against the Macron government, defending wages, conditions and the right to organise as trade unionists. We urge trade unionists to support the fight by contributing to the information strike fund at the link below.

Postal workers of a Paris, France suburban area have been on unlimited strike since March 26, 2018.

The strike initially sparked in protest of the firing of Gaël Quirante (secretary of the postal union SUD Poste 92). Labor Ministry Muriel Pénicaud, who authorized his firing, is now being called in by the court to testify as former CEO of Business France, a company suspected to have been unduly favored in the awarding of a public contract ! Today, the 150 strikers are fighting for Gaël’s rehiring but also against worsening working conditions and job destruction and for the hiring of temp and otherwise casualized workers.

La Poste management stops at nothing to try and break the strike : bailiffs, physical assaults by supervisors, summons by the police… And no spreading over time of the wage deductions, meaning 0€ paychecks !

The next paycheck is coming in the next few days, we need as many contributions as soon as possible.

Let’s help them win !

TO SUPPORT LA POSTE STRIKERS :

CONTRIBUTE TO THE ONLINE INTERNATIONAL STRIKE FUND :

-A transparent strike fund, in which the trade union Sud Poste 92 will receive and manage the funds

– A democratic strike fund governed by commonly agreed upon rules, which will be decided directly by the strikers.

The aim is to help all the post office workers participating in this unlimited strike, whether or not they be union members

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/09/14/french-postal-workers-international-strike-fund/feed/1EDINBURGH OCTOBER 6th – A RALLYING CALL FOR THE LEFThttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/09/11/edinburgh-october-6th-a-rallying-call-for-the-left/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/09/11/edinburgh-october-6th-a-rallying-call-for-the-left/#commentsTue, 11 Sep 2018 10:58:30 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12684Allan Armstrong puts the case for building a Scottish-wide Left contingent on the ‘All Under One Banner’ march in Edinburgh on October 6th

EDINBURGH OCTOBER 6th – A RALLYING CALL FOR THE LEFT

35,000 in Glasgow, 10,000 in Inverness, 13,000 in Dumfries and 16,000 in Dundee – ‘All Under One Banner ‘ clearly represents something significant in Scottish politics. However it requires an examination of a wider politics going back to 2014 to appreciate the nature of this phenomenon.

A thwarted democratic revolution

If we look at the Indy Ref1 campaign we can see that it represented a democratic revolution, with 85% actually voting, following a registration drive which drew in 97% of the potential electorate. This was something unprecedented in UK politics.

After the defeat of IndyRef1, a significant section of the Yes movement joined the SNP, making it by far the largest party in Scotland, and the second largest in the UK. This was followed in the 2105 general election by the SNP taking 56 out of Westminster’s 59 Scottish seats – again something unprecedented in UK history. Even in Ireland in 1918, Sinn Fein only managed to take 73 out of Westminster’s 105 seats.

However, this momentum has not been maintained. During IndyRef1 the dominant politics was fought out between the conservative unionism of the official ‘Better Together’ campaign and the constitutional nationalism of the official ‘Yes Scotland’ campaign. ‘Better Together’ was given a liberal unionist gloss, when the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron asked Labour and Lib-Dems to front his campaign, because of his party’s weakness in Scotland. ‘Yes Scotland’ was very much dominated by the SNP, but also involved the Scottish Greens and the Scottish Socialist Party.

There was also a more radical component of the wider ‘Yes’ movement. Initially the SNP leadership decided they wanted to conduct a pretty conservative campaign. To indicate their willingness to meet the needs of the great and powerful, the SNP’s October 2012 AGM ditched party opposition to NATO. Many members and two MSPs resigned. This created the political space for the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC), which was launched the following month. 800 people attended the founding conference. RIC involved Socialists, people from the Left of the SNP and Scottish Greens, and from various campaigning organisations. At its best, RIC constituted the republican and Scottish internationalist wing of the ‘Yes’ movement (1).

Reactionary unionism was kept at arm’s length by the official ‘No’ campaign. UKIP made no impact. ‘Better Together’ did not welcome the 20,000 strong anti-independence, Orange Order march in Edinburgh the week before the referendum vote. The Loyalist and neo-fascist rampage on September 15th, celebrating their ‘No’ victory and held in Glasgow’s George Square – the ‘Tahrir Square’ of the Yes campaign – was an embarrassment to the official ‘No’ campaign organisers too.

Nevertheless, despite Cameron getting his ‘No’ vote, sections of the British ruling class and unionist political establishment had been profoundly shaken. The liberal unionist promises made, especially by Gordon Brown, were soon abandoned. On the very night of the ‘No’ victory, Cameron already indicated his new job was to appease reactionary unionism, as he raised the issue of ‘English votes for English laws’. This was because Cameron knew he had to conduct the defence of conservative unionism on another front – continued membership of the EU. Glasgow’s then Labour controlled city council began to woo the Orange Order by supporting its Orangefest in George Square on June 7th, 2015.

The mainstream political parties, as in the other states of the EU (and beyond), had been experiencing a growing crisis of political legitimacy. This was due to their inability to deal with the legacy of the 2008 Crash. Despite Thatcher’s earlier support for the Maastricht Treaty to open up the EU to a more stringent neo-liberalism, and the various exemptions it put in place to favour British business, the UK’s competitive record against Germany, in particular, had not been favourable. Indeed, it was such worries that meant that the majority of the British ruling class never became liberal Europhiles, but remained conservative Eurosceptics. Such thinking has been central to an increasingly concerned British ruling class, which once dominated the world and is imperialist to its very marrow. And this has also been true of its leading political representatives from Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown through to Cameron.

In the face of a continued decline in the UK’s world rankings, the Eurosceptic Cameron wanted to reopen negotiations to seek further concessions. Thus the UK’s continuing relationship with the EU became a hot political issue. And after the unexpectedly close vote over IndyRef1, British ruling class panic over the future of their state came to the fore. It was time to batten down the hatches on the good ship ‘Britannia plc’. And, following the success of seeing off IndyRef1 to his Left, Cameron thought he could resort to ‘Project Fear’ once more and also see off the challenge to his Right – hence his decision to conduct a referendum on continued EU membership.

The rise of reactionary unionism

However, in seeking to renegotiate the Maastricht Treaty, Cameron opened up a can of worms for himself. The Eurosceptic Cameron thought he could utilise the Europhobic Right’s anti-EU campaign to win greater concessions from the EU. In an attempt to pander to their reactionary unionism, he restricted the referendum franchise to exclude EU residents and 16-18 year olds. This highlighted the contrast between the EU and IndyRef1 referenda.

The reactionary unionists, until now largely represented by Farage’s Right populist UKIP (after seeing off the BNP), saw their chance. They fronted their longstanding anti-immigrant politics with the demand to ‘Take Back Control’. An important section of the British ruling class and its political representatives seized upon this. For them to ‘Take Back Control’ meant reinforcing all the most reactionary elements of the UK state with its anti-democratic Crown Powers. It also means abandoning the liberal unionist promises made during IndyRef1 campaign and reining in some of the recent concessions made under Blair’s post-1998 ‘Devolution-all-round’ settlement. Indeed for Lawson this even opens up the prospect of overthrowing the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty and bringing the 26 counties back under the effective control of the UK state and City of London (2).

The UKIP challenge also led to a breach in the Conservatives’ ranks. The long-simmering Europhobic Tory Right began to organise quite independently of Cameron. These were not latter-day marginal Enoch Powells, ‘exiled’ to South Down, but people like Nigel Lawson and Boris Johnson, leading Conservatives and past or present cabinet ministers. Petty bourgeois outsiders they were not. Furthermore, the most widely read sections of the press, and the increasingly influential right-wing online media, were all strongly anti-EU. The Brexiteers’ referendum spending also (illegally) exceeded that of the Remainers.

Since the Right have won their Brexit vote victory, reactionary unionism has come to dominate UK politics. Theresa May became the PM. As Home Secretary she had been responsible for creating the ‘hostile environment’, which led to the notorious ‘Go Home’ buses in London (an inspiration for Farage’s even more notorious ‘Breaking Point’ trailer) and to the Windrush Scandal. The post-2016 Tory government is propped up by the DUP. This is the most reactionary government since the post-1918 War Coupon Coalition.

Scotland’s democratic revolution rolled back and the ‘Yes’ movement stalled

The sharp shift in UK politics to the Right, and a new reactionary unionist dominance, have rolled back the UK’s ‘democratic revolution’ and stalled the ‘Yes’ movement. Back in 2014, just as the British ruling class and the unionist parties had taken fright at the impact of the massive ‘Yes’ campaign, so the SNP leadership was worried by the development of a grass grassroots campaign beyond their control.

If there had been an independence vote victory, then the SNP leadership wanted politics refocussed upon the UK state. The ‘Yes’ movement was to be closed down, and its activists demobilised; whilst negotiations over Scottish independence were to be conducted between a Scottish side (led by the SNP but which would include Scottish unionists) and a British side nominated by the UK government. The SNP’s own ‘Independence-Lite’ proposals left the UK’s Crown Powers, the British High Command’s control over the armed forces, continued participation in NATO, and the City of London’s control of the currency untouched.

Nevertheless, despite the ‘No’ vote, the IndyRef1 campaign had created a mass movement, which did not look as if it was going to go away. RIC’s third annual conference, held two month’s after referendum vote, was its largest, with 3000 in attendance. An already concerned SNP leadership tried to limit RIC’s wider appeal by organising its own conference right next door on the same day. Nicola Surgeon was ‘anointed’ as the new SNP leader. 12,000 people witnessed this directly. The next job was to ‘hoover up’ as many as possible from the demobilised wider ‘Yes’ movement into the ranks of the SNP. Here ‘Yes’ supporters’ more radical ambitions could be contained and smothered within the party’s formidable centralised and top-down management structures.

Part of this de-radicalisation strategy was the attempt to promote Nicola as the leader of a social democratic Scotland – a social democracy which had been long abandoned by the Labour Party. And Scottish Labour was committed, not only to Blatcherite neo-liberalism, but also acted as the main political prop for the Union. The success of the SNP’s strategy seemed to be confirmed by its amazing electoral gains in the 2015 general election.

The SNP leadership’s failed attempts to link with Labour to promote ‘Devolution Max’ then IndyRef2

An often forgotten aspect of the 2015 general election was the SNP’s attempt to cement a new constitutional nationalist/liberal unionist alliance. This was designed to deliver the unionists’ referendum promises to implement ‘Devolution-Max’ (sometimes wrongly termed ‘Federalism’ – a constitutional impossibility under the Crown Powers). This appeal was directed at David Miliband-led Labour. However, as soon as Cameron aimed his fire at a Miliband, claiming that he was in the pockets of Alex Salmond and Gerry Adams, Miliband collapsed. He said he would rather have a Tory government than depend on the SNP to deliver his own very modest social democratic election manifesto. He got his wish! After this, the SNP had to angle for much smaller fish in the Westminster pond – Plaid Cymru and the Greens.

Once the Conservatives were re-elected, the possibility of further constitutional advance through the devolution of more powers evaporated. The British ruling class were united behind ‘No second referendum’ in Scotland. Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, led this mantra for the continuity ‘Better Together’ alliance. Nor did they did not want any political concessions, which could further whet the appetite of constitutional nationalists. However, this political stalemate was ended following the Right’s victory in the Brexit vote. They wanted not the devolution of power, but its centralisation and the further strengthening of the anti-democratic features of the UK state.

The 2016 general election saw the Left social democrat, Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. However, Corbyn showed no more ability to break from unquestioning British unionism than Miliband had. Labour strategists must have known they had no chance of winning back the majority of the seats they lost in Scotland to the SNP in 2015. Once again, the prospect of any social democratic government at Westminster depended on the SNP (and Plaid Cymru and the Greens). Corbyn could have offered a deal over the implementation of Labour’s own policies in return for the recognition of Holyrood’s right to hold Indy-Ref2. Corbyn’s manifesto was to the Left of Miliband’s, but contained little that could not be supported by the SNP. Indeed, Corbyn would likely have faced more opposition from Labour’s own strongly placed neo-Blairite MPs.

In Scotland, there is the additional problem that a section of the Labour Left is unionist like the Right in the party. During IndyRef1, the Red Paper Collective opposed a ‘Yes’ vote on the grounds that the UK state represents a historic gain for the working class (with some doubts over Ireland/Northern Ireland), and that Socialist, Labour and the trade union organisation should mirror that of the UK state. This they believe opens up a British road to socialism. Therefore, it should not be surprising that, having opposed Scottish independence they also, as Lexiters, supported the UK leaving the EU. Like so many others on the British Left, the Red Paper Collective dismiss national democratic challenges to the UK state as ‘petty nationalism’, whilst being completely blind to their own British nationalism.

Furthermore, Labour was possibly even more divided over Brexit than the Tories. The majority of working class, especially amongst its most exploited and oppressed, Black and Irish nationalist sections, were opposed to Brexit. But in those areas of England’s North and Midlands, devastated by Thatcher’s de-industrialisation drive, there was now a more fragmented, demoralised and alienated working class. Workers, their families and communities had seen their own organisations broken or undermined. Many now looked for saviours and scapegoats. Hence the successes of UKIP and the Brexit vote there.

In May’s ill-judged 2016 general election, and in the face of the intense media hostility directed at Corbyn, Labour unexpectedly clung on, not only to most Labour seats, but took seats in the largely Remain voting south east and university cities – including Lib-Dem leader’s Nick Clegg’s Hallam seat in Sheffield. However, Labour also lost seven seats it had held for generations in the Brexit-voting North and Midlands. The net result of this has been Labour paralysis. This makes Corbyn unable to challenge the Tories. Indeed, when it has come to crucial Brexit votes, May has come to depend on Labour as the other leg of Westminster support to supplement that of the DUP. This is the extent to which reactionary unionist politics now dominates the UK.

The SNP’s own anti-Brexit campaign joined the ranks of ‘Project Fear’. There was no outline of a possible Scottish internationalist ‘Project Hope’, which stretched its hands out to English, Welsh and Irish internationalists on the one hand, or to an alternative vision of Europe to that of the EU on the other. The SNP leadership has no vision beyond ‘Independence-Lite’, alongside the remainder of the UK (rUK) within the existing EU and the NATO-policed global corporate order.

The EU is not a state. It has no armies or police force. It is a treaty organisation between existing states. And Scotland is not an existing state. Many people may have chosen to forget President Van Rumpoy’s anti-Scottish independence interventions in IndyRef1. However, the EU leadership’s total lack of response to Spanish state repression over the Catalan referendum highlights the EU’s basis of dependence upon existing states.

After the 2015 Brexit vote, Nicola Sturgeon thought she could widen the basis of SNP government support by appealing to No-voting Remainers. But, having signed up to the ‘Project Fear’ during the EU referendum campaign, it is not surprising that SNP appeals in this direction have been largely unsuccessful. If your campaign hypes up the dire economic consequences of breaking with the an EU, within which Scotland is very much economically integrated, then it is little surprise that ‘No’ voting Remainers throw their hands up in horror at the likely economic consequences of also leaving a UK, within which Scotland is even that ‘more economically integrated.

The SNP leadership is conscious of the lack of success of its recent strategy, so something else has begun to emerge – the Growth Commission Report. This takes the SNP back to the pre-IndyRef1 politics of looking for sympathetic support from global corporate capital. It also means an acceptance of imperialist policing by the US and NATO. Back in 2007, the SNP leader, Alex Salmond, with the help of Sir George Mathewson, one time Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, drew up the SNP’s general election manifesto. Prior to this Salmond had attacked George Brown for not removing the last remaining regulatory constraints upon Scottish banks. Salmond was supporter of ‘Fred the Shred’, and courted both Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump. The political battle was between the SNP’s Scottish neo-liberalism and New Labour’s UK’s neo-liberalism. To gain an edge in this ‘race to the bottom’, Salmond had to appear more neo-liberal than Blair and Brown.

Looking to the neo-liberal ‘Irish Tiger’, Salmond wanted the creation of a neo-liberal ‘Scottish Lion’, where the proceeds of corporate profitability could ‘trickle down’ to the people of Scotland. Then came the 2008 Crash, and the people of Scotland, like the people elsewhere in the UK and EU found their incomes ‘syphoned up’ instead to bale out the banksters running the global corporate order. These banksters included the managers of the Royal Bank and the Bank of Scotland.

But corporate capital has a way of saving the economy – or more properly saving capitalism. Profitability has to be restored, which means the economy has to be rebuilt around low wages and short-term or zero hours contracts, and social spending has to be slashed with any remaining social provision privatised. But instead of us “all being in it together”, the corporate bosses, and their political representatives have to be given special rewards. Their incomes have increased during the long recession, and wealth has been further concentrated. Our incomes have been held back and our share of social wealth has decreased.

This is the world of the Growth Commission Report, drawn up under the auspices of corporate lobbyist, Andrew Wilson. In effect, it promises that after a decade of imposed austerity, “things can only get better”! Back in 2007, the SNP’s ‘Scottish Lion’ economy may have been wildly optimistic, but it hadn’t been tested to breaking point. The 2008 Crash did that. The wider political and economic conditions to take us back to the pre-2008 world just do not exist. The earlier certainties, like the EU, major international trade agreements like NAFTA, and possibly the WTO, are being undermined or dismantled.

Thus, such is the overall shift of politics to the Right that the SNP leadership have returned to total acceptance of the existing world order. To win over big business and the Right’s support for Scottish ‘independence’, an independent Scotland must be able to undercut any potential competitor, be it in terms of taxes or employees’ pay and working conditions. And an independent Scotland would be up against a rUK, whose principal Brexit advocates are looking to complete Thatcher’s counter-revolution. Therefore the SNP’s wannabe Scottish ruling class would have to be pretty mean.

The re-emergence of the `Yes’ movement

The experience of living through Scotland’s attempted democratic revolution was exhilarating. Meetings and discussions took place in Scotland’s housing schemes, inner cities and villages. Mainstream political parties had long abandoned many of these activities and some of these places. The ‘Yes’ campaign was also up against a media that was overwhelmingly unionist. The BBC fell back on the politics suggested by the first initial of its name. Only The National, a direct product of the ‘Yes’ campaign, and later on the Glasgow Herald, bucked the unionist trend. In response a massive online alternative developed. This stretched from the populist nationalist, Wings Over Scotland, through the Scandinavian-style social democracy of Common weal, to bella caledonia‘s “fresh thinking for the new republic”. The expectations raised by ‘Project Hope’ could not be so easily dissipated.

After the 2014 referendum defeat, the populist nationalist wing of the ‘Yes’ movement constituted itself as ‘We are the 45%’ campaign. They seem to believe that all ‘Yes’ voters are Scottish nationalists. To the outside world it appeared that main aim of their motorcycle cavalcades and rallies was to get 50%+1 of the population to fly the saltire and then independence would be home and dry. ‘Hope over Fear’ also adopted a populist nationalism. This campaign has struggled not to become latest vehicle promoting the celebrity politics of Tommy Sheridan, following the demise of his earlier fan club, Solidarity. Tommy’s continued move towards Scottish populist nationalism, mirrors that of his former ally, George Galloway, whose British populist nationalism took him into the arms of Nigel Farage. On the fringes of the 45% campaign a more stridently populist nationalism has emerged in Scottish Resistance. And beyond them were the further right Soil nan Gaidheal, no longer dressed in military fatigues, but still promoting an ethnic Scottish and anti-English politics.

Soil nan Gaidheal caused some concern when they marched in Inverness behind a ‘Tory {read English} Scum Out’ banner. Soil nan Gaidheal’s continued attempt to divert the ‘Yes’ movement into ethnic nationalist channels was shown by their new ‘Scotland First’ banner on the August 18th Dundee demonstration. This wording tells us something about their politics. It mirrors that of Trump’s right populist America First and the neo-fascists of Britain First. It is from such ultra-nationalist quarters that the call to exclude people from England from the franchise in any future referendum. But, even in the ‘We are the 45%’ milieu, they are still a small minority.

Furthermore, the civic national version of Scottishness, promoted during IndyRef1, has developed deep roots. On September 7th, Nicola Sturgeon announced that the vote in a future IndyRef2 would be extended to non-EU residents living in Scotland too (3). And this was on the day when Corbyn’s Labour Party agreed to accept a racist supremacist basis for the Israeli state, and potentially expel anyone who disagrees! This, of course, is grist to the mills of all those want to promote racial or ethnic nationalism in the UK.

Given the general drift of politics to the Right, the dangers of a re-emergence of ethnic nationalism in Scotland should not be written off. There has been a worrying report about an Alt-Right attempt to take over the smaller, and hence more vulnerable, Welsh independence movement. They hope, in the process, get rid of Plaid Cymru’s social republican, civic national leader, Leanne Wood (4).

Another group that felt abandoned after September 14th 2014, were many of the local ‘Yes’ groups, which had acted quite independently of the official ‘Yes Scotland’ campaign. The Scottish Independence Convention (SIC), which was avowedly cross and non-party, related to these people. On November 4th, 2017, they organised the 1800 strong ‘Building Bridges’ conference in Edinburgh, with barely a saltire or a kilt to be seen!

‘We are the 45%’ and the local ‘Yes’ groups provided the marchers for the ‘All Under One Banner’ (AUOB) demonstrations in Glasgow, Dumfries, Inverness, Dundee and most recently Dunfermline. The saltires of ‘We are the 45%’ and many grassroots SNP members still dominated, but the organisers and marchers welcomed organisations and flags from many places including Catalunya, but also Euskadi, Ireland, Wales and England.

If there is one over-riding feature of marchers on the ‘AUOB’ demonstrations, it is their demand for an immediate IndyRef2. Many are prepared to put aside any reservations they have about the SNP’s leadership’s real commitment to banning fracking, ending Trident, accepting the monarchy, or the doubts they hold about the Growth Commission. They believe that these issues can be solved after Scotland wins independence. This is why they are less patient with the SNP leadership over its prevarication about holding IndyRef and the continuous delays. Many of the arguments are over who supports IndyRef2 the most. To win this debate means calling for the earliest possible date for IndyRef2.

Whilst an SNP leadership, now openly wanting to woo big business, has its own reasons for delaying Indyref2, they also know something else. There is not much chance of the current reactionary unionist Tory/DUP government conceding another legally binding independence referendum (or an Irish Border Poll for that matter). In the absence of a change in the UK government, any attempt to organise an IndyRef2 moves into ‘Catalan territory’.

The majority of those involved in the Catalan independence movement are republicans and they voted for a Catalan Republic. They appreciate the semi-Francoist and monarchist nature of the Spanish state, in a way most Scottish independence supporters don’t fully understand the reactionary nature of the UK state. They see few of its anti-democratic aspects beyond Westminster and the reportage of the state-owned BBC. But as the people of Ireland well know, there are many other unsavoury features of the UK state, hidden behind the Crown Powers, which the British ruling class still has at its disposal. And, as in Catalunya, many more Irish people came to understand the need for a republican approach to politics. Republicanism challenges the UK state’s sovereignty of the Crown in Westminster and upholds the sovereignty of the people.

Socialists and the revived ‘Yes’ movement

The revived ‘Yes’ movement is one place where Socialists should be taking a political lead, in order once to organise the republican and Scottish internationalist wing of the ‘Yes’ movement. Scottish internationalism means looking for support in England, Wales and Ireland and beyond in the other nations (not states) of Europe.

But why have Socialists been slow to do this? RIC itself has been an alliance of Socialists, Left SNP and Left Green members, and people in no political party who are involved in economic and social campaigns and organisations. Some saw Scottish independence as a campaign of convenience. With New Labour having abandoned social democracy and opted for social neo-liberalism, Scottish independence seemed to be the only ‘game in town’. Therefore once IndyRef1 had been defeated, there was a return to campaigning over economic and social issues. When the unexpected re-emergence of Left social democracy in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn came about, for some there appeared to be another ‘game in town’

Corbyn’s social democracy appears to be more left wing in words than Surgeon’s social democracy. But this means ignoring or downplaying the role of the Labour Party machine, the majority of their MPs, MSPs, MWAs and councillors. At Labour’s lowest point in Scotland in 2015 they held out with one MP in ‘Red Morningside’. But right wing Ian Murray courted and depended upon Tory and Lib-Dem votes. Labour in Scotland is still ruling in alliance with the Tories in several Scottish councils. The sort of people who have joined the Labour Party in droves to support Corbyn in England, had already joined the SNP in Scotland. Right wing Anas Sarwar, not the ‘Left’ wing Richard Leonard, won the constituency membership vote in Scottish Labour’s leadership election.

Some Scottish Momentum supporters quietly acknowledge the difference between Labour in Scotland and England. They look to the latter to bring about their social democratic nirvana. However, Corbyn believes the UK’s existing constitutional set-up is quite adequate to bring about his desired social democratic reforms. This represents political naivety to a considerable degree, at a time when the ruling classes of the world are working to undermine the limited democratic institutions and rights we still have. Corbyn also believes in the necessity of keeping the Labour Right on board to win a Westminster majority. Labour’s climb down in the face of the combined Israeli state, Labour Right, Tory, Lib-Dem and right wing media assault does not augur well. Nasty and influential though this alliance is, they have less political clout than say the City of London. In a time of multi-facetted crisis, they will strongly oppose Corbyn’s quite moderate social democratic proposals.

Unlike the SNP, Corbyn-led Labour is not in office, so his open retreats over economic and social policies are not yet in evidence. But French Socialist Party leader, Francois Hollande, whose 2012 election social democratic promises were similar to those Corbyn, and Greek Syriza leader, Alex Tsipiras, whose social democratic promises were considerably more radical, were soon derailed and forced back on to the neo-liberal austerity road. The SNP leadership, trying to woo both transnational big and Scottish small business, does not want to make any challenges to the existing global corporate order, and is trying to get business on board beforehand. This is why it has already accepted a future neo-liberal austerity road with the Growth Commission.

But most of the Left support a social democratic road to its own particular version of Socialism or Social Justice. What this means, in effect, is the politics of democracy and political change are left to others, whether it be the liberal unionists or constitutional nationalists. This Left sees its job as upholding economic and social reforms, whether in independent campaigns, through trade unions, or by putting pressure on their chosen political parties – Labour or SNP.

The revived ‘Yes’ campaign is coming up against the brick wall of reactionary unionism, which will not concede another independence referendum. All those campaigning for desperately needed economic and social changes, such as in the Living Rent and Zero Hours campaigns, will also soon come up against the limitations of the existing political order. Socialists, like many social democrats, very much see the need to advance economic and social reform, but we also see the need to challenge the existing anti-democratic UK state. This is why Socialists should be involved in the ‘All Under One Banner’ demonstrations as an organised bloc.

The Radical Independence Campaign and the ‘All Under one Banner’ demonstration in Edinburgh on October 6th

RIC was involved in the SIC’s ‘Building Bridges’ conference last November. RIC also organised a conference in Edinburgh on the 10th March (5). Some speakers from the earlier Building Bridges conference addressed this event, and sessions were reserved for the current situation in Ireland and Catalunya. There were speakers from the SNP, including Tommy Sheppard and George Kerevan, Maggie Chapman of the Scottish Greens, Rory Scothorne of Scottish Labour Party and Momentum, Gerry Carroll the People before Profit MLA from West Belfast, Cat Boyd from RISE, and the inveterate land campaigner, Leslie Riddoch. The vexed issues of Brexit and Corbynism were addressed in a fraternal and sisterly manner.

This was followed up by the RIC AGM held in Glasgow on June 30th. Here a strategy, in relation to the wider `Yes’ movement and Brexit, was debated . The results of this can be seen on the RIC blog (6). One decision was to support a Brexit ratification campaign. A letter appeared in The Herald (7) and Allan Armstrong attended the ‘Another Europe Is Possible organised meeting in Glasgow on August 30th (8). Moreover, Angus & Mearns RIC also asked for wider RIC support for the ‘All Under One Banner’ demonstration in Dundee on August 18th . Dundee and Edinburgh RIC, and Trade Unionists for Independence joined the march (9). The RIC National Forum held in Edinburgh on August 11th, undertook to host a republican and Scottish internationalist contingent for the ‘All Under One Banner’ demonstration in the city on October 6th.

There will be three new banners. The first will read:-

For an Independent ScotlandFREEDOM COME ALL YEFor Scottish Internationalism

The second will read:-

ANOTHER SCOTLAND IS POSSIBLEANOTHER EUROPE IS POSSIBLEANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE

The RIC-Edinburgh banner, with its red-flag capped Edinburgh Castle and its call for a Democratic, Secular Scottish Republic, has been seen on many demonstrations. However, following our work with Women’s and LBGTI groups, with the Scottish Greens and environmental groups, and with social and economic campaigns and trade unionists, we are now updating this to:-

FOR A DEMOCRATIC, SECULAR, INCLUSIVE, SUSTAINABLE, SOCIAL SCOTTISH REPUBLIC

We are calling upon people to join us with their own organisation and campaign contingents, and with their own banners and materials. We are asking people to bring red flags, Scottish republican flags, Catalan Republic flags and Palestinian flags. We will produce a leaflet outlining RIC’s strategy and proposals for reviving lapsed branches and to reinvigorate the republican and Scottish internationalist wing of the ‘Yes’ movement.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/09/11/edinburgh-october-6th-a-rallying-call-for-the-left/feed/1CRISIS IN THE SSPhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/31/crisis-in-the-ssp/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/31/crisis-in-the-ssp/#commentsFri, 31 Aug 2018 12:14:42 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12681The SSP is currently going through another crisis. It survived the traumatic experience of Tommygate, but despite promises, the leadership declined, once the court case was over, to have a full debate on the lessons to be drawn. Instead those who raised these issues (including the RCN) became the subject of attack. However, the position of the SSP continued to decline, and the leadership coalition that had prevented such discussion, also began to fall apart, beginning with the collapse of the Women’s Network. The leadership became even more centralised around Colin Fox, Richie Venton, Ken Ferguson and Bill Bonnar.

However, the Scottish independence referendum campaign provided another opportunity for the SSP break out of the laager and relate to a mass democratic movement. The Radical Independence Campaign (RIC) (with successive conferences of 800, 1100 and 3000) was able to reunite many of those who had ended up on different sides over Tommygate. Solidarity, the Tommy Sheridan Fan Club, went into decline, abandoned even by the CWI/SPS and SWP, which had opportunistically given him their backing. The SSP leadership joined the official ‘Yes’ campaign, whilst also keeping a foot in RIC. In the process it attracted quite a lot of new members, particularly from the 2011 generation.

This was a time for the SSP to open up a serious discussion in the Left about socialist strategy and to fully democratise its structures, bringing on board the new wave of younger activists. As it turned out, the stance taken was to maintain the SSP as a sect around the existing leadership, and to maintain its distance from autonomous campaigning organisations. To work effectively means being able to address the inevitable political challenges faced when working in autonomous organisations. This will also develop critical thinking, which can itself be a major force in developing a wider genuine democratic culture. Instead the SSP leadership pushed its own own party campaign for a £10 an hour minimum wage. Substituting such party campaigns for work in autonomous organisations leads to members being shielded from political challenges, and this makes it easier to maintain the stranglehold of the existing leadership.

This has come to a head with the resignation Connor Beaton, who, until his resignation, was the SSP National Secretary. We are publishing his letter, along with the ‘official’ reply from SSP national chair, Calum Martin, and responses to this from Frances Curran, an SSP National Executive member and the Highland branch of the SSP.

1. ON MY RESIGNATION FROM THE SCOTTISH SOCIALIST PARTY –Connor Beaton National Secretary of SSP, 7.8.18

I circulated the statement below to the SSP executive committee following my resignation from the party on Saturday 4 August. I am publishing it in full for the sake of posterity and transparency.

Following my resignation from the Scottish Socialist Party at our EC meeting in Edinburgh on Saturday, I have written this statement to elaborate on the reasons for my decision — which I ultimately felt could be related to the EC more effectively in writing than in person.

My record as national secretary
Firstly, I’m disappointed at how sharply I was criticised for missing our previous meeting — the only meeting I’ve missed since taking on the role of national secretary, and one of very few since joining this EC four years ago. I won’t repeat my earlier written explanation for this.

Though I welcomed the opportunity to speak with Jim and Calum recently, the EC’s decision to despatch them to Dundee to pull me up on my conduct as national secretary (however politely) feels, in retrospect, immensely patronising and disproportionate.

Certain EC members made no secret of opposing my nomination as national secretary last year and have never relented in criticising my performance, without ever offering help or expressing support or solidarity when I explained why, at times, I was struggling with the workload. I’m grateful to those of you who did.

I find it particularly galling that members of this executive in relatively privileged positions — in receipt of wages from the party (without direct accountability), or without full-time work — have complained about my ability to take on an enormous burden of work without compensation, alongside a 30-hour work week and a considerable workload in local organising.

In spite of these challenges, I’m proud of what I have achieved over the past year. For instance, our internal communications, both as an EC and as a party, have never been more reliable.

My immediate predecessor as national secretary struggled to circulate emails to this executive without the assistance of another EC member. I was often asked to circulate documents to EC members ahead of meetings because his technical illiteracy prevented him from doing so.

One of my first acts as national secretary was to set up a Google Group so that any EC member could easily contact the full executive without needing two-dozen email addresses, more than a basic level of technical literacy, and without any danger of emails reaching the wrong people.

On party communications, I oversaw the introduction of direct email shots to party members instead of relying on branch secretaries to forward emails — which, in practice, meant it was difficult to predict when members would receive a communication or whether it would arrive fully intact, and members in semi- or fully collapsed branches (1) would never receive them. I worked hard to develop the member’s bulletin, which was already irregular before I took on this role, into a useful and attractive publication, despite receiving very little interest from the EC.

Many members — especially lapsed members who drifted after the referendum and have since rejoined — have told me they’re impressed with the improvement in party communications.

This EC has never arrived at a meeting venue to find that it hadn’t actually been booked, which happened more than once while I was an ordinary member. When I have suggested late changes to dates or venues, I have sought the consent of the wider EC and usually deferred to it, having myself protested my predecessor for his unilateralism and lack of accountability.

As well as this basic, unpaid administrative work, I’ve continued to contribute substantially to the party’s local work in Dundee, its interventions in major national events, and its much-neglected international work — for instance at the G20 in Hamburg and on the Catalan referendum, at great personal expense, which enhanced the SSP’s profile and reputation abroad and fed back into successful and well-attended public meetings in Dundee, Aberdeen and Glasgow.

Where others on the EC have played down the importance of this, I have worked to maintain a constructive relationship with other organisations on the left, including the Radical Independence Campaign, Living Rent, Fans Against Criminalisation, the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Catalan Defence Committee Scotland, Anti-Capitalist Queers, the Student Solidarity Network and others — members of which have told me they have a more positive impression of the SSP because of my honest and open engagement.

I did this in spite of persistent criticism of and disengagement from these organisations by a number of EC members. I have variously been told in the past year that RIC is irrelevant (as if the SSP can cast stones here), or that working with ex-SSP member Séan Baillie in Living Rent is untenable. I reserve a particular and very personal frustration for those EC members who disrespect all those involved in the SSP’s positive intervention at Glasgow Pride 2017 (where two queer anti-fascists were arrested) by dismissing LGBT politics as “trivial” or “liberal”.(2)

Nonetheless, it would be dishonest of me to say that I’m entirely happy with my record as national secretary over the past year and a half.

Since I joined the SSP five years ago, in the early days of the independence referendum campaign, I have been convinced Scotland needs a socialist party. The SSP has attracted the interest of thousands of people precisely because it is the largest organised expression of the popular aspiration to a mass, democratic, working class organisation engaged in community and workplace struggle (even though it cannot credibly claim to be this organisation itself).

When I took on the role of SSP national secretary, I knew I would be taking on an enormous workload and a key role in building a party that is often struggling for its very existence, let alone a key role in working class life. I took this on with enthusiasm and optimism, buoyed by the support of members who voted for me as well as many who couldn’t attend the last conference. That enthusiasm and optimism has evaporated over the course of the past few months.

It was particularly difficult for me to watch members of my own branch leave the party or fall into inactivity as a result of their own frustrations with the SSP nationally, despite my best efforts at reassurance. A stinging criticism was the complaint that our branch’s relationship with the party hierarchy was one-way: asked to pay ever-increasing membership subscriptions and attend events in Glasgow or Edinburgh, without ever receiving meaningful support (political or practical) for the political work we wanted to pursue in Dundee. This seriously exacerbated an unhappiness with a number of the SSP’s political positions (more below). Many former members have stated their continued respect for me as an organiser, but are unwilling to be affiliated to the SSP or its leadership — I continue to work with many of them outwith the party.

The SSP’s political shortcomings
I am also frustrated with the SSP’s inability to correct its serious political shortcomings. It is disappointing that we have come no closer to developing a coherent strategy than when we agreed to do so in September 2017. In lieu of this, I’m certain the SSP will continue ‘ambulance chasing’ (to use Ken’s phrase) and lurching from one disastrous political error to another.

As far as I’m concerned, these errors include the SSP’s confused ‘independence election’ intervention in the 2017 snap general election, which was widely read (and reported in the mainstream press) as an endorsement of the SNP in the face of a left challenge from the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. This played particularly poorly among the substantial base of working class Yes voters who have lost trust in the SNP since 2014 but remain wary of Scottish Labour — these people should and could have been our principal target audience.

It is shameful that the SSP has not been willing or able to articulate a strong left critique of the Labour Party that goes beyond their position on independence (which has not stopped a substantial number of Yes voters backing Labour to date) and frankly condescending statements from our national spokesperson which pathologise the movement around Corbyn (‘Corbynmania’) rather than offer a serious analysis of or answer to it. My proposal last year that the SSP produce a critical pamphlet on the Labour Party — drawing on the experience of people like ex-Labour MP John McAllion — was accepted by the EC and then overturned at a subsequent meeting in favour of producing a second pamphlet on independence, the uselessness of which has been proven by its failure to materialise many months later.

More recently, the SSP’s interventions in demonstrations for independence and against Trump have been grossly miscalculated, anchored around propagandising for our long-running economistic campaign for a £10 an hour minimum wage instead of making a serious effort to win participants to a socialist analysis and plan of action for breaking the British state or countering the far-right (for instance along the lines of the leaflet I helped to author for the RIC 2018 conference), which I can’t understand as anything less than an abdication of responsibility.

There is no evidence to suggest that the £10 Now campaign will be able to turn around the SSP’s fortunes. The political method that built this organisation and its predecessors was the hard graft of organising in working class communities around genuine community demands, in tandem with other forces (for instance in the struggle against the poll tax). The demand for £10 Now has not emerged organically; it is a demand that the SSP is imposing on working class communities rather than drawing from them. It doesn’t connect with popular anger in the same way as, for instance, the SSP’s streetwork against the bedroom tax in 2012-13.

Where I’ve suggested the SSP invests in a different approach, most explicitly in a paper which I circulated and published earlier this year, this has been either derided or roundly ignored. Most farcically, I’ve been told what I’ve proposed isn’t real class politics, which suggests to me that the SSP leadership does not truly grasp the idea of working class power, let alone how to build it. This has concerned me as early as 2015, when Colin discouraged my branch from prioritising work around the community-led campaign to save Menzieshill High School.

The SSP’s political culture
It is far beyond my capacity as one person to set out what the SSP can and should do to reverse its decline. All I expect from the organisation is the opportunity to contribute to this process in a collaborative and comradely spirit. This opportunity is routinely denied in the SSP.

The party’s internal democracy is fundamentally broken. Major political discussions and conclusions take place at the EC, rather than with the membership (and, of course, these discussions are driven by what is opportune in the short-term, rather than based on a coherent political strategy). Although the EC elections are run on a democratic basis, office-bearers regularly abuse their position to influence the results; Colin regularly phones branch secretaries and instructs them as to how their members should vote. His branch colleagues recently spearheaded a failed attempt to reduce the size of the EC by decimating the number of ordinary members, hurting political pluralism on the party’s most important decision-making body. My suggestion of a day school for members considering running for the EC was dismissed.

Political power in the SSP is ultimately held by the undeclared faction centred principally around Colin and Ken, who, despite assertions to the contrary, function as the SSP’s de facto leadership and persist in trying to centralise power even further.

Colin has intervened to prevent the international committee from organising its own educational events or sending motions to the SSP conference, instead insisting the committee should only do what the EC tells it to do. He has also sought to frustrate the process of producing a strategy, having incredibly proposed at one point that he could author a new pamphlet instead. He has coined the laughable phrase “über democracy” in complaining about democratic processes.

Discussions at an EC level are dominated by a very small handful of people who evade responsibility for the poor outcomes of their proposals and initiatives. Colin once boasted to me of being “the longest-running party leader in Scotland”; it was once pointed out by another member that any other party leader with such a record would have resigned by now.

Although the SSP is ostensibly not a democratic centralist organisation, there is a strong prejudice against expressing any dissidence publicly. But even inside the organisation, criticism of current SSP positions or campaigns is often met with personal attack and ridicule, and shut down as quickly as possible. Political errors are never acknowledged or dissected, but simply forgotten. When members do share dissident views outwith the organisation — even couched in conciliatory language, or presented as ideas for discussion — this is treated as an act of disloyalty. In particular, “social media” has become a scapegoat for a problem rooted in the lack of genuinely open, democratic and accessible spaces for political discussion in the party.

There is a double standard, however, where the SSP core leadership is concerned. Colin, for instance, faced no rebuke for publishing an embarrassingly poor blog on the Catalan referendum in its immediate aftermath, without having consulted either the democratic decision-making bodies of the party (the EC and NC) or the SSP members who were hosted by CUP on a delegation to Barcelona and Sabadell. The position he set out — that “the tactics the independence movement employed in Catalonia in holding this referendum may well have backfired” — was later rejected emphatically by the SSP NC in May 2018, when it was finally able to vote on a Catalonia motion. Similarly, Ken is not expected to answer for using Voice editorials to advocate his proposals around campaigning for a “People’s Parliament”.

Inertia
Not only is the SSP’s internal regime notably undemocratic, as if that was not enough, its centralisation also contributes to political initiatives disappearing to inertia.

Student members who wanted to establish an SSP Students Network around the time of the student occupations were ridiculed at the EC, which instead charged Colin and Hugh with meeting with Strathclyde University students to develop a proposal acceptable to the SSP leadership. Months later, nothing has emerged from that instruction; neither Colin nor Hugh have responded to my latest request for an update. (3)

Besides letting down the SSP’s student membership, the general unwillingness by the SSP EC to engage with the student movement has allowed the Labour Party to make serious inroads there while virtually unchallenged.(4)

Nearly a year after Ken hinted towards it, a serious online news presence for the Voice, which could well have contributed positively to the wider pro-independence left, has not materialised. My offers of help on this — having developed successful online news platforms as my full-time job for the past three-and-a-half years — were repeatedly ignored (though I was recently able to help Simon Whittle secure the socialistvoice.scot domain, at my expense). By failing to take online seriously, the Voice is marginalising itself and minimising its own readership; I don’t think the blame for this lies anywhere but in Ken’s general unaccountability to anyone but himself.

Leaving
I am happy that I’ve at least tried, unlike many other critics of the SSP, to intervene and argue for a change in the course of this party. However, five years after I joined, the SSP feels more than ever like an organisation in terminal decline in both political and practical terms. It is a shadow of the organisation I joined in 2013, let alone what it was at its peak 15 years ago.

I can’t overstate the despair that I’ve felt lately about the direction of this organisation, in which I’ve cut my political teeth, made close friends, and gained most of my political education. I am happy to accept that this has undoubtedly had an effect on the quality of my work as national secretary, despite my reassurances to Jim and Calum that I was committed to the role.

As I’m no longer able to justify working on behalf of the SSP, my only principled option is to resign my posts and membership with immediate effect.

I can no longer accept the disproportionate level of scrutiny and criticism that has accompanied my work as national secretary; I can neither support the SSP’s political direction (particularly the weight assigned almost exclusively to the £10 campaign) nor challenge it effectively from within.

My priority over the next few months will be working in tandem with other activists in Dundee (including former SSP members) on a series of political interventions that will, I hope, help build the political power of working class Dundonians and the strength of the local organised left.

I will be happy to continue collaborating with SSP members on specific initiatives where this is mutually useful, but I am no longer happy to be shoring up support for the SSP as an organisation nor its beleaguered, unaccountable and hopelessly out-of-touch leadership.

Footnotes

1. I also took the initiative with Jim and Scott to identify and formally dissolve/merge collapsed branches.

2. It was Colin who called them “trivial issues” in his reflections on the RISE conference in late 2015. Hugh called them “liberal issues” in July 2018 when I criticised messages he sent about LGBT politics from the SSP’s Facebook page without consulting the SSP social media team and particularly its LGBT members.

3. I emailed Colin and Hugh on 9 June 2018 and received no response.

4. Key figures in the Labour Party visited student occupations, sent messages of support and paid for food deliveries, whereas Colin successfully intervened at EC to insist that SSP material about the UCU strike should include “no more than a footnote” about the considerable amount of solidarity shown by students. Colin was then asked to write a statement about the UCU strike which never emerged. I personally know several activists involved in these occupations who have gone on to become Labour Party members.

__________

2. Letter to The National from Calum Martin, National Chair, SSP, 11.8.18

Readers of The National would be advised to take the claims made by former Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) member Connor Beaton with a pinch of salt.

For Connor resigned as national secretary after being unanimously called to account by the party’s executive committee for his conduct in that role.

He resigned in a dramatic fit of pique last Saturday leaving our monthly meeting without a single word of explanation as to his reasons.

His actions followed the unanimous decision of the previous monthly executive committee to call him to account for his unexplained absence at the previous month’s meeting and his performance as national secretary.

Myself, as chair, and our national treasurer were asked to meet Connor and obtain an explanation from him for his performance as national secretary.

We met him in Dundee where he unreservedly apologised for letting the party down citing personal reasons.

It was agreed we would report back to the executive committee, recommend his apology be accepted, that we would all try to help him in his duties as national secretary and move forward together on that basis.
At no time did he raise any of the criticisms he now alleges in his resignation letter.

The SSP rejects each and every one of the allegations. Moreover he did not raise any of them formally inside the party at any meeting of the executive committee, national committee or other forums available to him. That is because he knew the party as a whole did not agree with him.

His conduct this week has shown the wisdom of the executive committee in calling him to account in the first place. He has now left the party in a way that could inflict damage on his ex-comrades as he goes. Such is life.

Meanwhile SSP members look forward to participating in next weekend’s independence rally in Dundee, intervening in forthcoming university freshers fayres and hosting the Scottish Socialist Voice Forum on the Sustainable Growth Commission’s report in Edinburgh on September 15.

_________________

3. Reply from Frances Curran, National Executive member of SSP.

Connor Beaton who was elected as the SSP secretary at the last conference dramatically resigned at the SSP Executive (EC) last week.

He issued a resignation letter.

A statement in response was circulated by Colin Fox to EC members asking for agreement to issue it publicly, there was no agreement from EC members a large number were opposed to issuing the statement. However a watered down version of the same statement appeared in the National on Saturday under Calum Martin’s name.
I cannot speak for the others but below is my response to the draft statement circulated to EC members. The impression has been created that the EC agrees with the statement in the National — this is far from the truth.

“I have noticed there had been no discussion on Connor’s resignation letter, until the article in the National which I have just read.
I want Connor’s resignation letter as an item on the agenda of the next EC and I want the leadership of the party to address the issues — we are crying out for an honest discussion, and to ask why we are in this state and it is democratic to ask those in the leadership positions to give an account of how the think we got here and what responsibility they shoulder for this situation.

We have just lost Connor who was an asset to this party, who had a commitment to the party and who represented a younger generation of activists. (He is only 22). I have watched 4 waves of young people come through this party during and after the indy ref campaign, the majority have passed through and gone out again, the vast majority of them are still active in the movement but not in the SSP, I still work with them. The culture of the party is a factor in this decline. It does not facilitate democratic engagement and discussion.
And as a result of this there is a total lack of political analysis and then a strategy of how to create and develop a mass socialist/anti-capitalist wing on the independence movement rooted in the working class.

I was totally opposed to the way Connor was treated. I was opposed to his absence being an agenda item added half way through the meeting. I was opposed to the culture and the attitude of Colin and made the point that this was wrong that no-one has even spoken to Connor making the point that we don’t know why he is at the James Connolly meeting. I specifically used the words “I am opposed to this culture” in my — by then — rather heated exchange with Colin in the break. Unfortunately, a family member had taken seriously ill and I had to return to Glasgow and wasn’t present for this agenda item. I remember Callum saying that he had assumed Connor was ill but that Connor hadn’t explicitly said that in his apology for the meeting.

I think it is disingenuous to say the EC unanimously asked Connor to account for his absence. I would have opposed it and I made my view clear in the break.

Connor outlines a pretty devastating critique of the party and the leadership, some of which I concur with and other points, particularly political points which I don’t. But in any healthy party those differences would be easily accommodated and in fact be seen as a strength.

The attempt to argue that he is either: not up to it; a renegade; not a real socialist; not a real revolutionary; a dilettante; doesn’t sell papers or do stalls; or is an enemy of the party, so we will not entertain his points, is quite frankly poor.

These patronising insults have been tossed after a whole procession of talented people who have joined and then left this party over the last 5 years.

I have raised these issues on numerous occasions at the EC to be met with deaf ears and a closing down of discussion and on way too many occasions been shouted at by Colin. A bullying culture which brooks no descension or any genuine discussion. In any other organisation it would not be tolerated.

The leadership of this party which has been in place for 10–20 years have totally failed to develop another layer of young members to a leadership role. A devastating track record.
So, the party continues to be run into the ground, it is in the worst position ever since we launched in 1999. Nationally the branches have never been weaker. Glasgow is a rump of a party, we have little visibility, no influence and even fewer active members.
It was demanded that Connor account for not attending one meeting. Where is the accountability of the leadership and the paid organisers of the party for the dire situation of the party?

There is no democracy, a few individuals put themselves on almost every platform at public meetings, these decisions are not taken democratically. There is no collaboration or any democratic channels for discussion certainly not at a Glasgow level about political analysis strategy or tactics. Every leaflet is written by Richie despite challenges to that situation. How are those decisions taken? Where is the democracy? This has been challenged over the years but there are no democratic structures through which to challenge it. The Glasgow regional committee was closed down by the regional organiser about 7 years ago.

This is not the SSP I founded, discussion was encouraged, pluralism, i.e. different political points of view were welcomed, we were trying to clarify both a political perspective for this new party and a strategic plan of development. All of the EC members spoke at meetings on behalf of the SSP, Allan Green, Alan McCombes, Rosie, Carolyn, me, Tommy, Richie, Colin, Donnie (youth) and many more. We consciously tried to develop a collective leadership. We introduced 50/50 and massively changed the representation of women in the party, now we have one of the worst situations of any party for women’s representation and activism.

The party leadership has overturned the culture that the SSP was founded on and has withdrawn from the unity of the left, the strategy of the early SSP. They have retreated to the ‘ourselves alone bunker’.

The paid organisers and the de-facto leadership should be asked to account for the steady decline of the party.

Connor has raised some serious points which merit serious discussion, I don’t agree with all of them but I do agree with others, this should be put on the agenda for discussion not swept under the carpet.

I don’t support issuing the statement. I agree with Kevin’s proposal.

Comradely
Frances

________________

4. Letter to The Editor of The National in response to ‘SSP reject claims made in resignation letter’.

Dear Editor,

As members of the SSP Highland branch (two of whom are members of the SSP Executive Committee) we wish to take issue with the letter published today from the SSP Chair regarding the resignation of the Party’s National Secretary.

It is regrettable that a decision was taken to issue such a letter publicly rather than deal with this within Party structures and therefore as a Branch we feel it also necessary to make our position public.

There are many inaccuracies in the statement, from minor issues such as stating he resigned “dramatically in a fit of pique” (he calmly made a statement and left the EC meeting) to major concerns of ” the SSP rejects each and every one of the allegations”.

This is completely untrue – at no time has the Party considered the, in some cases, very serious, allegations raised by Mr Beaton therefore they have been neither refuted nor proven at this stage. To state otherwise is simply a lie.

To state the allegations were not raised “because he knew the party as a whole did not agree with him” has no basis in truth. The Party EC has yet to agree a statement in response to Mr Beaton’s open letter therefore to make such a statement does not reflect the views within the Party. As a Branch we cannot stand by whilst the membership is misled in this way.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/31/crisis-in-the-ssp/feed/1OPEN LETTER AND PETITION TO LEN McCLUSKEYhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/27/open-letter-and-peitition-to-len-mccluskey/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/27/open-letter-and-peitition-to-len-mccluskey/#commentsMon, 27 Aug 2018 13:01:29 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12678We have revived this open letter and petition from Ian Allinson of UNITE Grassroots Left. It calls upon UNITE members to reject Len McCluskey’s call for the Labour Party to adopt the IHRA definition anti-semitism.

OPEN LETTER AND PETITION TO LEN McCLUSKEY

We the undersigned call on you to oppose the adoption by the Labour party of those IHRA examples of antisemitism that would threaten legitimate support for justice for Palestinians.

We were concerned to read in his blog post for Huffington Post on 16 August that our General Secretary, Len McCluskey, while explaining clearly why some were problematic, argued that “It would be for the best if all eleven [of the IHRA examples] were now agreed, so the party can move on”.

The IHRA working definition of antisemitism is just 38 words and unproblematic. It was adopted by the Labour Party some time ago. The IHRA added 11 examples of what it says antisemitism “could, taking into account the overall context, include”.

The Labour Party needed a clear definition for disciplinary purposes, and it was aware of concerns about the IHRA examples being used to restrict legitimate discussion of Israel and Palestine. These concerns are held by a wide range of people and organisations including Kenneth S Stern (their original author), many Jewish groups, the Society of Black Lawyers, and the Home Affairs Select Committee.

The Labour Party NEC proposed a new Code of Conduct on Antisemitism based on the IHRA definition and examples, but with more clarity and detail, some additional examples and, more contentiously, not directly including the following four examples from the IHRA guidelines:

1. Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
This is included elsewhere (point 14) in the NEC Code.

2. Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
This is discussed in detail in the code, making clear that to deny Jewish people the same right to self-determination as any other people is antisemitism (point 12), but that the discussion of the foundation of the Israeli state, its impact on Palestinians, the implications of Israel’s definition of itself as a “Jewish state” or its differential treatment of different peoples is legitimate (points 13-14).

3. Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
This is included in point 13, but without the word “other” which presupposes that Israel is a democratic nation, a legitimate point of debate given the treatment of Palestinians.

4. Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
This is addressed in point 16, which replaces the IHRA vague statement that this could be an example of antisemitism depending on the overall context, with an explanation of that context.

The publication of the proposed NEC Code triggered another round of allegations of antisemitism against the Labour Party and its leadership, including unsubstantiated claims of “institutional antisemitism” in Labour, that Corbyn himself is an antisemite, and that he represents an “existential threat to Jewish life” in Britain.

There is antisemitism in the Labour Party, as in other political parties and wider society. It must be opposed and challenged unconditionally, irrespective of loyalties or disagreements on other issues.

At the same time as tackling examples of antisemitism and other forms of racism in our ranks, we recognise that many of the attacks have different motivations. Len McCluskey’s blog post rightly talks about the desire in some quarters to see a right-wing split from Labour. As well as those who see the Labour Party’s move to the left as a threat, there are those in the UK and around the world who fear a government led by Corbyn because of his long support for the cause of justice for Palestinians.

The concerns that adoption of all the IHRA examples could prevent legitimate discussion and support for Palestinian rights have already borne out by experience.

Last year a panel on “Debunking misconceptions on Palestine and the importance of BDS” [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel] was banned by the University of Central Lancashire citing the IHRA definition, after pressure from pro-Israel groups. Barnet council cited the IHRA definition in treating all individuals and organisations who supported BDS as antisemitic and banning them from using council facilities.

Unite’s policy, set at our conferences in 2014 and 2016, describes Israel as an “apartheid state” and supports BDS. Encouraging the Labour Party to adopt a definition which has already been used to brand such policies as antisemitic would undermine Unite’s democratic process.

Unite should continue to both support Palestinian rights and oppose antisemitism, and must not jeopardise the first on the false grounds that this helps the second. These are matters of principle, not political expediency. But we disagree with Len McCluskey that adopting flawed rules on antisemitism that undermine the Palestinian cause will mean that “the party can move on”. Many of those calling for the adoption of all 11 IHRA examples have already made clear they are looking for the expulsion thousands of Labour Party members. If they would be expelled under the IHRA examples but not under the NEC Code, this means their expulsions would be based on criticism of Israel, not antisemitism. Giving in to these demands will feed the false attacks on Labour, not bring them to an end, because many of the attacks are based on opposition to the left and the Palestinian rights, not on genuine attempts to tackle antisemitism. Indeed, the conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel undermines genuine attempts to tackle antisemitism.

We call on Unite’s Executive Council, Labour Party NEC representatives and Labour Party Conference delegation to stand firm against pressure from the right and from opponents of Palestinian rights, to oppose the adoption of the problematic IHRA examples which threaten free speech on Palestine and the Palestine solidarity movement, and to challenge genuine antisemitism wherever it appears.

The outcomes of all elections are the resultants produced by misshapen class struggles. The consciousness of the participants and the audience are formed in the policies. But the institutions as well as the consciousness of the participants distort the process too. This is especially true for the United Kingdom political system. During elections the class base and regional biases of the contenders become increasingly clear. This does not make the rules and procedures under which they are fought “neutral,” fair and balanced. Indeed, participation reveals the biases even more clearly. Unfortunately, the political parties that usually take part have a vested interest in failing to make this clear to a wider public. Over UK history, the institutions that supposedly reflect or refract democratic aspirations have evolved to favour of the aspirations of the dominant classes and groups albeit this has grown less visible and seemingly more neutral.

The UK has three seats of government –the monarchy, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Only the Commons could remotely be described as “democratic.” Yet even here, it is still necessary for any newly elected Member of Parliament to swear an oath of fidelity to the monarch his or her heirs and successors that makes hypocrites out of any genuine opponent of class privilege or honest republicans. This has been a recurring point of contention by Irish republicans for over a century. Once elected into the pool from which members of the government are selected, it is necessary to become a member of the monarch’s Privy Council by swearing yet another oath of fidelity as well as undergoing yet another feudal ceremony.

The government of what became the United Kingdom after 1707 had its essential institutions (monarch, Lords and Commons) affirmed by Charles II and have remained the same since those days. Although the balance and powers between Parliament and monarch and between Lords and Commons have moved more and more in favour of the lower house, it would be an enormous mistake to see the House of Commons as a repository of democratic values. Late feudal and early capitalist institutions, procedures and practices still hold enormous power.

“The UK state, acting through the Crown,” writes Steve Freemen, “is the master not the servant of the people. The most important ‘fact of life’ established by the ‘Glorious Revolution’ is neither the monarchy or the people. It is a mask for those who run the country on behalf of the British ruling class. It is the servant of the political interests of the ruling class at home and abroad. The Crown has at its disposal all the powers and resources of the civil service, the security services, armed forces and diplomatic service and mass media. It is supported by the main political parties, the Tories, Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party and all the Unionist parties in Northern Ireland.”1

The UK is in dire need of a profound democratisation. An elected head of state, a written constitution that defines the responsibilities of every elected official and defines the rights of all citizens is long overdue. An electoral system that enables all groups and individuals to participate is an essential requirement of a modern, democratic, republican society. This is what is largely meant by an “unfinished bourgeois revolution.”

A Member of Parliament, nowadays, is elected for a geographical constituency. These are arbitrary boundaries. Yet in the recent past these constituencies included transparent bastions of class privilege such the pro-Tory university seats abolished since 1950. Still remaining, the Remembrancer is the City of London Corporation’s representative on the floor of the House of Commons. Only elected members and duly appointed officials are allowed this access. Yet this unique anachronism has a privilege that no ordinary member of the public can possess. The legacy of Empire continues through the British Overseas Territories, eg the European Parliamentary seat of South West England includes Gibraltar. The first-past-the-post system applies in the individual constituency with the candidate obtaining the largest number of votes winning. Because of the attractive powers of capital with its growing geographical concentration of wealth and, of course, ever growing population has produced a bias towards the South-East of England with the largest number of constituency seats.

In 2017, the Tories had an increase in their share of the vote. This is unusual because they have been in decline in seven out of nine general elections since 1931. The effect of this is as John Ross wrote, “The Tories collapsed further back into their South of England and rural heartland. Despite the dramatic 15.2% collapse of Liberal Democratic votes the Tories could only pick up a tiny 0.8% in a winning year – although it is unusual for them to increase at all between election victories.”2 In Scotland in 2015, The Scottish National Party could take fifty-six of fifty-nine seats with only one going to the Conservative, Labour and Liberal-Democratic parties. The unrepresentativeness of the electoral system is blatant.

REGIONAL REPRESENTATION

The regional diversity of the UK is visible and extreme. Various partial attempts have been created to address this concern. But they have not been approached as a single UK-wide issue. Scotland has a Parliament while Wales and Northern Ireland have Assemblies; all have different powers and responsibilities. The current system may benefit Greater London, the South East and the East of England with just over a third of the total population. But in areas such as the midlands and the north there are no locally based governmental champions that can directly address their regional wants, needs and aspirations. Instead they have to hope for the attention of the House of Commons at Westminster. Talk of creating a “northern powerhouse” or of enhancing northern cities while lacking any institutional structure make this a difficult expectation.

Regional assemblies need to be created that reflect the real structure of the communities that are found in the UK. Ironically the best reflection of the different polities, economies and communities that can be found are those established by the European Union for purposes of statistical measurement – Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS).3 These territorial units should be the basis for English regional representation. Regional assemblies can deal with the issues that affect local economies while Westminster should deal with issues of foreign affairs, defence, macroeconomic policy as well as putting in place the essential regulators of services such as health, education, economic affairs. This would be essentially federalism; it is a valid demand. Consequently, the number of MPs need not be as large as it is at the federal level.

Though the first-past-the-post system is seen as ripe for change, the constituency-based system also needs to be abolished. Members of Regional Assemblies and National Parliament should be elected on a regional basis in direct proportion to the percentage of votes attained in each regional area. Consequently, a multi-member approach would allow a far wider range of views to be represented. Put simply, regional assemblies should comprise one single large constituency; a federal parliament the same constituency contributing its proportional share of elected MPs to Westminster.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s desire to reduce the total number of Westminster constituencies to six hundred has produced many boundaries that have no real bearing in the way people live their lives. Devolved government in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has created the so-called West Lothian question where the right of MPs where devolved government exists to vote on issues affecting England that English MPs cannot in the devolved countries. Yet the total number of Westminster MPs is still seen as far too great, especially when it is borne in mind that most lack the ability or base to ever become members of the government. A reasonable size for an elected parliament of the UK is probably about four hundred.

THE PURPOSE OF ELECTIONS

Many opinions and points of view cannot find adequate expression through the current electoral system, even if they can find a base in a single constituency. The current electoral system of first-past-the-post also produces so-called “broad church” parties. These parties do not reflect a point-of-view so much as a sentiment. Their members and adherents almost never wholly agree with the policy positions put forward by the parties’ leaderships. Everything becomes a “compromise,” to hold the party together. Unrepresentative minorities, reflecting powerful interests, exist in all the so-called “broad church” parties. This way powerful class forces exert a powerful influence over weaker groups. The current situation with Remain advocate, current Prime Minister Theresa May at variance with many even in her cabinet is mirrored by EU sceptic Jeremy Corbyn surrounded by his antagonistic forces. It becomes hard to identify policies as well as the leaders’ willingness to implement them. This is a never-ending source for disillusionment in politics and politicians. Politics ceases to express hopes and aspirations but becomes an application of wishful thinking. One major side effect of real electoral reform could be to alter the kinds of political parties that currently exist.

Many of the left know that the constituency based, first-past-the-post is rotten and is a very poor way of obtaining accurate electoral representation. In a general sense there is a recognition that a better form of proportional representation is necessary. Regrettably, this has often been understood as a commitment to Single Transferable Vote (STV). There are various methods of STV but the main features are that the voter has to order the parties or candidates in order of preference, usually numerically. This is so that a voter preference for one candidate can be transferred to another candidate. It is, nonetheless, very difficult for many voters to understand causing enormous confusion. This can produce a result where a candidate with the highest number of votes can be “ganged up” against and lose. It also biases outcomes towards the candidate who least offends over the candidate who takes a strong stance that can cause antagonism from vested interests especially when that candidate is raising a controversial issue only to eventually be proven correct.

There is an inherent “conservative,” risk averse bias to STV. Put simply, it biases results towards “centre” type candidates, or candidates who claim to be in the centre. It is hardly surprising this is the system preferred by the old Liberal Party and the Liberal-Democratic Party and the Electoral Reform Society. These are also the principles governing the D’Hont system for the Scottish Parliament. In many ways, it was designed to keep the Scottish Parliament weak.

The left has nothing to gain from STV. Rather it should be developing principles that allow the maximum number of hopes, aspirations and points-of-view to be expressed within the electoral system. It should be assisting the currently unrepresented to be heard, even if they are the views of a minority. At present, and under STV, minority views simply never get heard; they do not have the opportunity to grow from small to larger. Removing the distorting prisms that the electoral system produces should be the governing principle. Bringing to an end the use of the electoral system as a way of silencing disagreement and dissent should be its goal.

PURE PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION ON A CLOSED PARTY LIST

Although it is often derided by established interests, a system of Pure Proportional Representation will create the largest possible number of different voices in an elected assembly. Seats should be in direct proportion to votes cast eg fifty per cent of votes means fifty per cent of seats, twenty per cent of the votes means twenty per cent of the seats etc.. It also means that no vote is a wasted vote because even if a party gets only one representative, it is possible for a minority to obtain election; a voice that would normally be elbowed out can be heard. This is an important principle for a just system of proportional representation. It is the approach carried out in Israel and the Netherlands.

Because an individual is being elected to a representative chamber and from it to form a government, it is essential that the party submit a list in advance with the order that the individuals are ranked. This is the closed party list proportional representation system. From this the voters can better assess the parties’ commitments to its declared policies as well as its commitments to race and gender equality, and commitments to left and right in their own ranks. It will be from the manifesto and the order on the list that the party will be judged. The quirky individual or locally based individual will no longer carry the weight they have in the past. Of course, individuals with a large personal following may still exert an influence, but the bias is to the party because it can form the body of men and women necessary to perform the tasks and duties of government. Unless there is a large number of voters wanting one-person-dictatorial-government, the party is the best expression of this.

This system avoids all complexity at the level of the voter who has only one vote and puts it against the party he or she feels best expresses his or her wishes. There is no need to rank or order votes according to a sliding scale of preferences. It makes counting simple too. During the lifetime of a parliament or government, alliances between different parties and individuals can be formed. These should be permitted with the only mechanism of censure being the ballot-box.

PURE PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION ON A CLOSED PARTY LIST

Number of Seats in Direct Proportion of Votes
Only One National or Regional Constituency
There are twelve NUTS Regions
Only One “X” per Voter
Party to Submit List with Ranked Order of Candidates
(Closed Party List Proportional Representation)
Size of Parliament & Government Fixed by Written Constitution
Electoral Agreements Pre- and Post-Election Permitted

Not only will all electors have at least one representative that can best articulate their aspirations and hopes, but a more dynamic process is being created. Voting for the least worst of all possible options will cease. (No longer will it be possible to argue a case for an unacceptable candidate just to keep the Tories out or the nationalists out.) Electors will be asked to vote for what they want not what they are likely to get. Removing the artificially drawn boundaries will make it easier for voters to focus on the national tasks in hand. It will shift elections away from entrenched interests towards ideas, hopes and aspirations. This will place a greater burden on parties to better express the hopes of the people who vote for them as well as properly organise themselves. Hopefully, this will invigorate the electoral process by permitting new exciting ideas to be discussed and issues to be more politicised.

Scotland and Wales should remain one constituency, however representation across the United Kingdom will need to take cognizance of the enormous geographical differences that exist. Elections according to the total electoral population will be required for the UK. Although it is beyond the scope of this paper there is a strong case for regional champions in the shape of regional assemblies in England. This would make more sense that attempting to create northern powerhouses through major regional cities; an approach ignores small towns, rural and coastal areas. An authority that can handle all local issues is urgently required.

The table uses various sources for the total regional populations within the NUTS areas, they are not precisely accurate, so they should be used as near approximations. The outlined case is applied to the current United Kingdom; it is not a denial of the case for an independent Scotland or Wales, or that the six counties of norther Ireland should remain in the UK. The total number of representatives within the suggested federal parliament is set at four hundred though this is a guess and can be set at different levels without affecting the principles outlined. The areas need not be accepted in whole or part; indeed there may be strong case to merge the North West and the North East into one region with one regional assembly.

GEOGRAPHICAL PURE PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM PARLIAMENT

Geographical Constituencies set by Written Constitution and Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics

NUTS Total Population(Various estimates)Percentage of Total PopulationTotal Number of Seats

Political parties can arise for a number of reasons. They usually arise to express some interest that is not felt to be adequately represented either in parliament or government. Parties can attempt to represent class, women, ethnic minorities, geographical areas, etc.. They may exist for some short term goal such as to oppose a new infrastructure development. The reasons they come into existence are their own and not the electoral system’s. Perhaps, most importantly, it will shift politics away from established parties where electors often imagine their interests can be best, but never fully satisfactorily expressed or achieved. It will shift politics to more defined goals creating a politics based on achieving ideas and aspirations. That will produce a livelier, more engaging, exciting kind of politics.

However, at present, political parties do now need to be registered, and their emblems registered with a designated officer who is responsible for their conduct. In elections where lists are required, it has become essential for parties to have them submitted by the appropriate time and date. This should become a universal demand. The ridiculously biased system of deposits should be abolished. At present, candidates getting below a small percentage of the vote can lose their entire deposit. Only parties gaining above that can keep their deposit. This encourages “conservatism” in the electoral process. Deposits can only be lodged in cash or by banker’s draft, not cheques or money transfer. The system is not only antiquated but also absurd. This would require the party to go into the communities and try and win some popular support. It would also invigorate the political process too.

There will be occasions when an elected representative resigns, or passes away. A by-election has the advantage of allowing the government and the opposition an opportunity to assess their popularity. This may change the balance of the government. Although this is still possible with this system, a simpler approach can be achieved by simply appointing the next person on the list to take up the vacant position.

CHANGING THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM WILL CHANGE POLITICS

The principle that no vote should be a wasted vote by making it easier for all points of view to be represented will enrich all political life. This approach can end the current disillusionment with politics that leaves enormous numbers weakened. As an agitational demand this type of proportional representation can invigorate large numbers. Nevertheless, powerful groups and people will oppose any reduction of their privileges. But in advocating this type of change a model for future progress becomes possible. At present, working class people are represented on the basis that they are best represented by the best type of “compromise” that can be achieved from powerful interests, but not on the best type of society that can be built in their interests. Shifting politics away from best representing the status quo to one that builds up ideas, and aspirations that can mobilise the best creative energies of the people should be the purpose of the electoral system. This is the direction that we must move in institution building. The republic we choose to build is not just one without a monarchy and an aristocracy, or even a bourgeoisie but one that gives a positive purpose to its people and institutions.

2. http://ablog.typepad.com/keytrendsinglobalisation/2015/05/index.html
“To see why focus on the post-1931 vote – its downward shifting trend is clear as shown in Figure 2 which shows the descending part of the chart above. This thesis of ‘Tory decline,’ when I first produced the chart of this trend in 1983 at the height of Thatcher’s grip on politics, in my book “Thatcher and Friends,” was met with disbelief. But it met the test of seven out of the eight next general elections. It is certainly annoying for the author, and much more importantly tragic for the country, that in 2015 it didn’t. But as the chart [not cited] shows the Tory 36.9% in 2015 doesn’t break the overall descending trendline.

“The underlying social forces that had produced the overall decline continued to operate even in 2015. Tory support in Scotland fell further to 14.7% – in 1945-55 Conservatives had more support in Scotland than England. In the North of England there was a swing to Labour. In the South’s urban bastion, London, Labour won 45 seats to the Tories 27. In contrast, in the South outside London, the Tories won seats from Labour.

“The Tories collapsed further back into their South of England and rural heartland. Despite the dramatic 15.2% collapse of Liberal Democratic votes the Tories could only pick up a tiny 0.8% in a winning year – although it is unusual for them to increase at all between election victories.”

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/09/no-vote-wasted-for-pure-proportional-representation/feed/0EUROPE AND THE TRUMP DOCTRINEhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/01/europe-and-the-trump-doctrine/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/01/europe-and-the-trump-doctrine/#respondWed, 01 Aug 2018 22:41:54 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12668In this article Paul Demarty argued that Donald Trump is following a logical policy which meets the requirements of a declining US capitalism, and its growing economic weakness, highlighted in the aftermath of the 2008 Crisis.

EUROPE AND THE TRUMP DOCTRINE

If Donald Trump is such a disastrous president, why is America not suffering?

Readers cannot, of course, have missed the drama. Having spent most of his European tour insulting his hosts and briefing against them in the media, the time came for the president to visit his Russian counterpart. Trump, as is his wont, has blown hot and cold in his relations with the Kremlin, but likes to be seen as having successful meetings with foreign leaders, and so – after hours alone with only an interpreter each – the two presidents came out to announce unspecified breakthroughs in Russo-American relations.

From the point of view of Trump’s enemies, Putin is not just another world leader. He is the evil genius, who suborned American democracy in order to get his man – one DJ Trump – into the White House. So there then ensued the event that caused such a farrago – Trump was asked directly what he thought of the opinion, unanimously held in the ‘intelligence community’, that the Russian state had interfered in American elections. He replied that he had heard it said, but then Putin had just denied it at length in their private conversation, and he “didn’t see why” the Russians “would have” behaved in that way. The whole universe went apeshit for a moment, until the president’s office ‘clarified’ that he had meant to say “wouldn’t have”. This seems to be good enough for congressional Republicans, although not anyone else. It looks, for all the world, like Trump has brassed this one out too.

Nobody ought to be surprised. We have been ‘saying goodbye’, relieved, to The Donald more or less since the moment in June 2016 when he first descended the Trump Tower escalator to the press conference to announce his candidacy, capping the event off with an absurd racist tirade against Mexicans that had the punditocracy quite convinced that his presidential ambitions were stillborn.

So much for that; and for the subsequent hundred supposed meltdowns on the primary campaign trail; and for the attack on bereaved soldiers’ families, and ‘Pussygate’, and the other things that were supposed to deny him the presidency; and the equivocation over neo-Nazi rallies, and the internment of children … It is almost as if the American political mainstream is completely adrift from the actual state of the body politic. Trump is not popular on the left, of course, or among liberals. Elite conservatives, also, find him distasteful. His approval ratings among Republican voters, however, remain high. ‘Decent’ anti-Trump candidates for office – even sitting congressmen – find themselves in danger of losing primaries if they take a stand against him. With many prizes up for grabs this autumn, Republican tongues are easily stopped. (It is not off the point, also, that the latest barrage of indictments related to ‘Russian interference’ – of Maria Butina, Paul Erickson and others – suggest that the Putin regime’s interest in the American right long predates Trump’s rise to power, and puts many more Republican figures in the frame.)

Consequences?
It is easy – too easy by half – to take the epiphenomena of the electoral cycle at face value. It so happens that Trump is popular, all things considered, among the people who matter. Why? Are they simply stupid? Racist? Are 63 million Americans actually, as it turns out, merely Russian Twitter spam bots? Or is there something else going on here – something with its own rationality?

Let us return to the world stage, where the president is such a striking performer. Trump has spent the last fortnight doing the wrong things, according to the collective folk-wisdom of the state department/intelligence apparatchiks whom Barack Obama nicknamed The Blob.

The Blob is focused on maintaining America’s global supremacy, as it currently exists. That means hegemony over western Europe, control of global petrochemicals and strategic dominance of ‘the heartland’ – principally via the management and encirclement of Russia.
Obama was too ‘sensible’ for his own good, and so it got its way most of the time, but nowadays The Blob faces off against The Donald – a walking, tweeting, ranting disproof of every game-theory exercise the Rand corporation ever put on. The interesting thing is that the negative consequences have not come to pass. There are no meaningful signs that Europe is able to pursue a foreign policy independent of the US, even as the latter treats the former with insults and contempt.

As to the fears of Putin running rings around Trump, perhaps that will come to pass, but we doubt it. At the end of the day, Russia is not a real or potential military threat to the United States. Even its cyber-warfare capability, with tales of which Brookings wonks scare their children, are trivial compared to America’s.

The swingeing trade tariffs, meanwhile, are supposed to decimate the US economy. Yet jobs, wages and growth are all up.
It seems that Trump was right all along, as he fumed about “bad deals” like a shopkeeper scorning a child for paying over the odds for a pint of milk. The US-led world order turns out not to be in the interests of the US. Trump, inasmuch as he is capable of grand strategy, pursues a world in which the grand military and economic alliances that held the ‘free world’ together under American dominance against the Soviet foe have been replaced by a hub-and-spokes system, in which America maintains separate bilateral relations with everyone. This, so the thinking goes, will leave everybody individually weaker than they presently are, and allow the US to bully everyone more effectively. Remarkably, the Trump doctrine – pithily summarised by some anonymous White House aide as “We’re America, bitch” – is already paying dividends.1

And, indeed, why shouldn’t it? Trump’s diplomatic antics have the effect of, to use the jargon of macroeconomics, scaring the shit out of the markets. Money flows to where it is safest – which is to say, to the place with the biggest guns – Trump’s America. The original rationale for the pre-existing diplomatic infrastructure – keeping the Soviet Union at bay – is clearly gone today, so it is not entirely implausible that keeping NATO, the European Union and all the rest afloat represents ‘good value for money’ for the American state. The laughable mismatch between the defiant words of European leaders and their feeble deeds tells a story. We could not do a better job than Yanis Varoufakis did, commenting on last month’s G7 meltdown:

[Trump] cannot possibly lose a trade war against countries that have such high surpluses with the US (eg, Germany, Italy, China), or which (like Canada) will catch pneumonia the moment the American economy catches the common cold.2

America’s allies can huff and puff, but as long as the United States controls the reserve currency and the military capability to reduce anyone to irradiated dust, they will just have to suck it up.

Meaning of Trump
There was a brief fad in left letters for short books seeking ‘the meaning of’ some proper noun or another – Alain Badiou, at the height of his modishness, sought The meaning of Sarkozy, and Richard Seymour followed up with The meaning of David Cameron.

If there is a ‘meaning of Trump’, it is something like the return of the repressed. What was concealed under genteel professionalism, religiosity and patriotic bromides in various proportions under Obama, Bush and Clinton goes naked in the Trump era. Mass deportations of migrants are no longer a dirty secret, but a game of ostentatious cruelty. Communalist-patriarchalist ideology no longer comes in the garb of the southern Baptist preacher, but in a red trucker hat and a confederate-flag tattoo.

So it is with Trump’s global strategy of tension. His open insults to world leaders are more or less without recent precedent (although John Bolton did a pretty good job of it under Bush). However, the net effect of at least the pointy end of US global policy in this whole period – its series of wars of intervention – have achieved nothing except the spread of chaos and anarchy. Trumpism merely introduces the spirit of Fallujah – if not yet the exact methods – into the courtly dance of imperial diplomacy. Where there currently stands a punch-drunk EU, Trump wants to see a pack of disaggregated nations fighting like hungry dogs for the scraps from America’s table. The greatness to which he wishes to restore his country is a very relative matter – it is enough to reign in hell.

If Trump is, in that sense, the truth of neoconservatism and the Laputan ‘realism’ of The Blob – those ideologies pulled inside out, to hide the utopian and pseudo-scientific bullshit and reveal the bloodlust and violence within – there arises the question of why nobody tried it before. Here we must at least admit the grain of reality in the mainstream critique of the Trump doctrine. It may work well enough for a good Republican outing in the midterms, or even a second glorious term for the great helmsman himself in 2020. Yet the economic stimulus on offer is a short-term bonus. Likewise, it is absolutely certain that the other major powers are not now in any position to challenge American supremacy. But those powers have had no reason even to try terrifically hard to challenge American supremacy, for it was a ‘good deal’ for them.

If Germany and other NATO laggards cough up 4% of GDP towards their militaries, in response to Trump’s demands, he will no doubt hail it as another great victory for the ‘master of the deal’, but there is a paradox there, for a build-up of military strength reduces the bullying leverage America has. Admittedly, the Germans and such will have to put a lot more than that into their military budget to even irritate the Pentagon; but rising powers need not fight hegemons head on to cause difficulties. As Blob-realism would no doubt remind the geniuses around Trump, the western Roman empire did not fall to any rival that had exceeded it in military strength: it collapsed because its near abroad contained enough potentially hostile powers with good enough military capability that fighting them all at once was impossible.

A ‘Roman’ end to the American empire, of course, is hardly an attractive prospect – not least due to the unimaginably greater destructive power of modern weapons. Yet, within the zero-sum game of inter-state rivalry under capitalism, no other end is imaginable, and even that one is far enough off. A breakthrough for the proletariat, especially in a global region capable of sustaining itself, like Europe, provides a different way out, and the possibility of a ‘better deal’ for American workers – even that sliver of them targeted by the Trumpites – than the current occupant of the White House can presently offer.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/01/europe-and-the-trump-doctrine/feed/0THE BREXIT RATIFICATION REFERENDUMhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/01/the-brexit-ratification-referendum/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/01/the-brexit-ratification-referendum/#commentsWed, 01 Aug 2018 22:05:52 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12665This blog has been covering the case for holding a Brexit Ratification referendum. This was brought up at the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC) conference held in Edinburgh in March. The motion below was passed at the RIC AGM held on June 30th. This is followed by a letter by Allan Armstrong which was printed in The National, and another by Steve Freeman, which was printed in Weekly Worker.

The following motion was passed at the RIC AGM on June 30th.

1. This meeting recognises that a majority of the Scottish people voted to remain in the European Union.

2. We condemn the Tories imposing a hard anti-working class ‘all British Exit’ on Scotland.

3. We call on the Scottish government to hold a ratification referendum on the Tory deal.

4. We note that if a majority of the Scottish people vote against the Tory deal this would be a justification to trigger a second Independence referendum.

_______

Allan Armstrong wrote a letter to The National in support of this, which was published on 24.7.18.

In The National of 23.7.18, Carolyn Leckie has raised the idea of the Scottish government holding a rerun of the 2016 EU referendum. Like Carolyn, and for similar reasons, I voted to Remain in 2016. I have even less illusions in the EU than Carolyn. I recognise that the EU, unlike the UK, is not a state with is own army or police force, but is a treaty organisation between existing member states. But therein lies the rub for neither Scotland nor Catalunya are states, so their national concerns are not recognised by the EU.

However, the UK state has even more of a stranglehold over Scotland, and the purpose of those in charge of Brexit, is to further centralise state power to protect the rich and powerful. They want to undermine the employment and welfare conditions for both UK subjects and EU residents. Or as Nigel Lawson has put it, “Brexit will complete Margaret Thatcher’s economic revolution”, only this time not in alliance with Ronald Reagan, but with Donald Trump.

I would suggest that better than a rerun of the 2016 EU referendum, would be a Ratification referendum. Brexiteers never provided any plans in the event of a Leave vote, and we are now witnessing the shambolic consequences. So a new referendum should be over the conditions of the proposed Brexit deal. It is highly unlikely that Yes voting Leavers, or indeed even some No voting Labour Leavers, are happy with the Brexit deal now being pushed by the Tory Right and DUP, mightily helped by the anti-democratic nature of the UK state.

The Brexit vote did split the Yes movement, even if the Remain vote was not only overwhelming, but also formed a majority right across Scotland. Yet, a third of the original Yes supporters voted Leave. Thus, a Ratification referendum would provide the possibility for reuniting both Yes Remainers and Leavers. Both May, and sadly Corbyn, continue to hide behind the dubious ‘democratic mandate’ of the Leave vote, despite the rigged franchise, with the exclusion of EU residents and 16-18 year olds (in contrast to IndeyRef1) and, as Carolyn points out, “the daily exposure of breaches of electoral law.” But a call for a rerun referendum would most likely strengthen the hard Right in England. However, many Brexiteers would find it much harder to oppose a Ratification referendum, bringing “power back to the people”, than a rerun of the 2016 EU referendum.

A successful Ratification referendum in Scotland would increase the pressure to hold a wider referendum, or to trigger a general election in the UK. Either of these could undermine the continuing slide to the Right in UK politics and lead to a break in the current political logjam, which is only aiding the Tory and further Right. However, any continued attempts by May and the Tory Right to obstruct the likely outcome of aRatification referendum in Scotland could also provide a more effective spur to either IndyRef2, or whatever form the next stage of the Scottish democratic movement takes.

Letter from Steve Freeman published in the Weekly Worker on 26.7.18 (https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1213/letters/)

Ratification

On September 16 Tory MP Justine Greening came out in favour of a second referendum. She proposed three questions and a system of preferential voting. The Labour Party is not in favour, but did not rule it out. Theresa May said it would not happen under any circumstances. Politicians and parties are split between ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘maybe’.

There will be a Tory deal with the European Union. There will be a process of ratification. The only question is, who will be able to vote to ratify or reject it. It could be ratified by the crown – perhaps by the privy council. It could be endorsed by the Westminster parliament with its 1,450 MPs and lords having a ‘meaningful vote’. It could be ratified or rejected by 46 million people in a ‘people’s referendum’.

Opposing a people’s vote means supporting the authority of the crown-in-parliament. There may be a case to oppose a ratification referendum, but it is not based on general principles. This would find the Weekly Worker automatically opposing the Irish referenda on gay marriage and abortion and the Scottish referendum on self-determination and separation. We cannot hide from the working class behind a big wall of ‘principles’.

We are not dealing with any old referenda at any old time, but specifically in relation to the fight over the United Kingdom leaving the EU. It is essential to distinguish ‘repeat referendum’ from ‘ratification referendum’. The term ‘second referendum’ is often used to confuse or obfuscate. We need to cut through that.

A repeat referendum means asking the same question from 2016 – “Do you want to leave the EU?” It is claimed by the right that ‘leavers’ in the ruling elite want to overturn the result by running it again. The Irish case is cited. After the Treaty of Lisbon was voted down, the Irish government ran it again to get the result they wanted.

In principle there is no reason why a given nation should not be asked the same question again. People are then free to give the same answer or change their minds. Democracy is a process which involves learning more of the truth and thinking again. Elections every five years could be annual events. They are not ‘once in a lifetime’, as Cameron described the 2014 Scottish referendum. Scotland’s IndyRef2 would be a repeat referendum asking the same question as in 2014.

A ratification referendum is different. It is not seeking to repeat the first EU referendum. It is asking a different question for the first time: ‘Do you support or reject the deal negotiated between Her Majesty’s government and the EU?’ The 1976 Common Market referendum was in effect a ratification of Ted Heath’s actual agreement to join the EU on known terms and not a decision to join in principle.

In England, ‘leave’ supporters often describe a ratification referendum as a ‘second referendum’ to suggest it is an attempt by anti-democratic forces to run the same event for a second time and get a different result. In January 2018 Nigel Farage mischievously called for a “second referendum”. He wanted to repeat the same question to put an end to the “moaning of politicians who had not accepted the previous vote” (The Independent January 11 2018).

Recently the University and College Union circulated its members to consult on a ‘second referendum’. General secretary Sally Hunt explained: “At its recent meeting the national executive committee (NEC) agreed to my recommendation that the union consult members on whether to support a second referendum on the final Brexit deal negotiated by the UK government.” Since there has not been a first referendum on the final deal, this displays a Faragean level of confusion.

We must be absolutely clear. Our slogan must be ‘No to a second or repeat referendum – yes to a ratification referendum’. Justine Greening called for a second referendum, containing both repeat and ratification-type questions. It must be opposed, but not on the grounds that we oppose every referendum on principle, everywhere, on every occasion.

In England there is a democratic case to oppose a repeat referendum and support a ratification referendum. The 2016 EU referendum divided the working class in England. A repeat referendum would deepen that divide and play into the hands of the Tory right, Ukip and the fascists. Jeremy Corbyn is correct to rule out a repeat referendum, but wrong to oppose a ratification referendum.

In Scotland the argument is different. A majority voted to remain – an important distinction between ‘leave’-voting England and ‘remain’-voting Scotland. There is no reason for Scottish ‘remain’ supporters to repeat this – although Scottish ‘leave’ supporters may have a reason to call for a repeat, hoping Scotland may have changed its mind.

At the end of the day the issue of a referendum is a tactical question in a struggle that has divided the country into ‘leave’ and ‘remain’. We need to locate the case for a referendum in the struggle between reactionaries and ultra-lefts, on one side, and liberals and democrats, on the other.

Steve Freeman
London

also see article by Steve Freeman, The Crisis of Democracy, in Weekly Worker, no.1214

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/01/the-brexit-ratification-referendum/feed/1A QUIET TWELFTHhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/01/a-quiet-twelfth/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/01/a-quiet-twelfth/#commentsWed, 01 Aug 2018 21:35:01 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12661We are posting the latest update in out coverage of events in the Six Counties. This article was first posted by Socialist Democracy (Ireland)

A QUIET TWELFTHCapitulation to Orangeism pays off, but at what price?

Four Catholic families have been intimidated

out of Cantrell Place in Belfast

The Orange marching season in the North of Ireland kicks off with Twelfth of July marches, preceded by the 11th night bonfires. This year the Twelfth demonstration passed almost without incident. The 11th night bonfires saw a rash of hijacking and petrol bombing in east Belfast and parts of County Down. These were protests following a court order applying fire safety rules to a bonfire. The Ulster Volunteer Force gangsters behind the hijacking believed as a matter of principle that the bonfires should be free of any legal impediment.

They were a small minority. The unionist population were indifferent, the paramilitaries had been paid off and, for the first time ever, the Democratic Unionist Party stepped forward to demand obedience of the law.

It has taken decades of conflict resolution and social engineering to get to this point. The Parades Commission, a government quango, has suspended the right to demonstrate for the whole population in order to engineer minor changes in Orange behaviour. The Commission is free to believe six impossible things before breakfast and to contradict itself at any time. No one demands a clear application of law. Alongside the Commission has gone massive grants to orange culture, the police constantly refusing to implement the law on the grounds that intimidation was a matter for community dialogue, collaboration by local government in organising the bonfires, and more recently a series of bribes and protocols which simultaneously paid the loyalists while allowing them to write the rules around what is at heart sectarian triumphalism. The icing on the cake was Taoiseach Varadkar endorsing the Orange Order and his declaration that the Irish state were “neighbours not invaders.” The final step to calm the Orange involved a series of royal visits, with Irish nationalism in general and Sinn Fein in particular bowing and scraping to confirm that any democratic content to the nationalist programme was a thing of the past.

The policy has been a relative success and the response has been general relief. All are aware of the corruption behind the settlements but most feel is a price worth paying for a quiet life. Nationalist Ireland feel that this is a job well done. The Orange Order has finally been lulled to sleep. Any minor irritations, such as the constant sectarianism and racism accompanying the bonfires, can be ignored especially as the nationalist middle-class are largely unaffected.

At one level of course the Twelfth was far from quiet. Young nationalists and republicans were involved in nights of rioting in Derry. The policy of enabling Orange bonfires and parades is less popular in Derry, especially when local youth know that there will a determined attempt by the state and the former republicans to suppress any nationalist demonstrations during the August commemoration of internment. When Sinn Fein lined up with the churches and the great and the good to condemn the riots and call on the police to suppress them, firework attacks were launched on the homes of Gerry Adams and leading republican Bobby Storey in Belfast. The pretence is that this is mindless violence, unconnected with Sinn Fein’s unrestricted endorsement of Orange reaction. Yet quite clearly Sinn Fein policy leads to the alienation of its base. At the moment that reaction is that of a minority and is wedded to militarism, but the emergence of a political challenge is inevitable.

There is a downside. Sectarianism has been quieted by being accepted and codified. In the process the Protestant working class have been handed over to the control of the DUP and paramilitaries in loyalist areas. Victims of sectarianism are now defenceless. At every instance of sectarian intimidation the police will shrug their shoulders and point to the protocols in place.

The bonfires will remain an ongoing focus of sectarian and racist intimidation bedecked with flags and effigies of their enemies to be burnt in the fire. Paramilitaries can hide behind the fiction of legal flags to continue intimidation and to force people from their homes. It is significant that Cantrell Close, designed as an area of shared housing between Catholic and Protestant to demonstrate the non-sectarian future guaranteed by the Good Friday Agreement, has now been ceded to the control of the loyalist paramilitaries. The state and Sinn Fein so openly endorse housing apartheid that it causes no upset.

Behind the corruption lies deep complacency. The nationalists are convinced that demographic changes will give them in the majority in the area and lead to United Ireland. Yet the Good Friday Agreement, British policy, the acceptance of Orange culture and of sectarian division as well as the class interest of the nationalist middle-class and Dublin capital are building a sectarian stasis that will be hard to change.

This stasis will eventually collapse. The only alternative open is the alternative of workers unity and the workers Republic. It is this alternative which has been suppressed by identity politics and cultural equivalence in the new sectarian state.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/08/01/a-quiet-twelfth/feed/1STILL TALKING ABOUT JOHN MACLEANhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/25/still-talking-about-john-maclean/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/25/still-talking-about-john-maclean/#commentsWed, 25 Jul 2018 16:29:40 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12651Gerry Cairns replies to Allan Armstrong’s review of his book, The Red and the Green – A Portrait of John MacLean (http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/22/allan-armstrong-reviews-the-red-and-the-green-by-gerard-cairns/)

STILL TALKING ABOUT JOHN MACLEAN

Replying

Reviews and reviewers can vary. In reply to a new book or a new film the reviewer has different motives – be they professional, journalistic or political/polemical. When I read Allan Armstrong’s review of my own book, The Red and the Green – A Portrait of John MacLean, it felt like a different kind of review. It was personal but certainly not in the way one would expect. It was refreshingly personal. It was not in any way, shape or form a personal attack as you would usually associate with “personal” in that sense. It was, however, a personal reflection of the man whom my book is about and who has inspired Allan throughout his adult political life. It also prompted a personal reflection of Allan’s political journey and it is important that this started Allan’s review.

I suppose it is fitting that I give a summary of my journey. We are both socialist republicans and have arrived there from different locations as Allan is right to acknowledge. I am born and bred in a four mile radius in the east end of Glasgow. I was brought up a Catholic and still practice my faith – with all the falling in and falling out that would be expected of someone with left wing politics! My family were mostly of Irish descent and it is said that my politics came down a line from my Granny Cairns to my father to me (although family legend has it that they would have started a political fight in an empty house whereas I am more mild mannered.) My Granny wrote to IRA prisoners after the border campaigns in 1956 and had a wide library of Irish republican books. Young Gerard, however, always and still does feel more Scottish although I can be as romantically Irish as anyone when I am across the water.

I was introduced to MacLean through a leaflet which my Granny gave me on The Irish Tragedy – Scotland’s Disgrace. This title from MacLean’s famous pamphlet was also the title of a public meeting. I have no recollection of the group or the date but the brief conversation prompted much reading and talking about this remarkable man. I do, of course, wish they were both here to see the book.

At 17 I joined the Scottish Republican Socialist Party (SRSP.) It seemed natural. I saw no contradiction between my belief in socialism and my nationalism as expressed in my belief in Scottish independence. These beliefs had formed in discussions with my father, my granny and in reading. There is no doubting that I wanted for Scotland what the Irish were fighting for but this youthful view would be replaced by a considered look at the British State and how it operates which would mean that my belief in a Scottish Socialist Republic has cemented in time. When Allan mentions that I come from a more left nationalist tradition he is probably correct.

I was drawn by the Scottish Workers Republic magazine which is a fine magazine edited by my old friend, Donald Anderson. There have been some fantastic outputs from some fantastic writers over the years. Some of these outputs formed a fine archive that would become a fine website. I am biased and so I should be.

I have been a member of the SRSP for 32 years with the caveat that the Party became a Movement. I was a dual member of both the SRSP and the SNP for a while as I had friends standing for election for the SNP and was able to form links with the group in Edinburgh who had set up the Liberation magazine, which made a fine contribution to republican socialist politics. The Glasgow SNP knew who I was and I was unceremoniously expelled from the SNP as a dual member. As I mentioned the P became an M and the new Movement (with the same faces) joined the Scottish Socialist Party as a faction within the Party. I was Branch Secretary for Glasgow Springburn Branch and did my bit contributing to the Scottish Socialist Voice. Allan has a longer and better history in fomenting this through his work with the Scottish Socialist Alliance. I too remember the meeting where Allan spoke superbly well, with myself seconding, in a debate with Alan McCombes and Tommy Sheridan. Our joint contribution played a part in the ex- Militant Tendency in Scotland coming out for an independent socialist Scotland.

I particularly remember the Glasgow Aggregate meeting to discuss the entry of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) into the SSP. I spoke against and lost. Alan McCombes said at the meeting that the SWP would not come out the other end the same way that they went in. Alan was right and I was wrong as witnessed by the 2018 Bannockburn rally where the SWP were all under one banner selling the Socialist Worker on the field of Bannockburn. The world has turned upside down!

My other political love was the John MacLean Society. I became Secretary from a young age. Not only did I first get to meet Allan but also some fine comrades – Jim Young, Bill Johnston and John Ford who were also office bearers. Pacifists such as Janet Cameron and Brian Quail. The Society was able to raise funds from the trade union movement to reprint Nan Milton’s biography of her father, John MacLean. This is still the definitive book on John. We also printed a collection of essays, Unmasking Reality and ensured that the John MacLean march (begun by comrade Tom Anderson in 1924) continues to this day. The Society is pretty much defunct now as most our members literally died.

With Allan, I share a passion for history. We have crossed swords in various debates around the period of the Covenanters through to the Jacobite risings. I came into these debates naïve and with my Catholic baggage – The Covenanters were marauding Protestant bigots who could not be revolutionaries and John Knox couldn’t be right on anything could he? I learned a lot from my Edinburgh friend whose level of knowledge and clear learning in this area was impressive. I was surprised that I was an able adversary as I had nowhere near the expertise which Allan held but I was learning. I do see the Covenanters and their struggle in a different light, which is a great credit to those debates and to Allan.

When I then saw Allan’s review and its length and scope I was humbled although the review was still a critique, a positive critique, of my book as I would have expected. I am very pleased that Allan acknowledges that I sought to raise some questions along the way. A hagiography would have been easy and perhaps understandable given my background. But this did not sit with my approach. I wanted to write something that was different and that was loosely chronological but not strictly so. I wanted themes that would overlap. Jim Young’s fine John MacLean: Clydeside Socialist was also thematic but differed in its scope.

Allan is right to say that we have never engaged in sectarian debating as it is not our style. Neither should this reply be in that style although Allan raises some excellent points and I would like to come back to them.

That Old Time Religion

Some of the most positive feedback that my book has received has been on MacLean’s relationship with his old religion – Calvinism. I had no intention of focussing so sharply on this issue before I started researching until the evidence jumped out. I could see that other biographers, including his daughter and John Broom, had given this a wide berth. There would have been no justice to MacLean’s memory in any other description of him than as a convert.

Without Charlie Marx he could have been a Free Presbyterian minister. And I do not intend to do his memory a disservice by saying that he probably looked and sounded like one all through his life. He did not just abandon his faith and then make a few occasional side swipes in later years. His mission, yes mission, was to take the fight to the established Churches who had chosen the side of the rich and powerful and to debunk their ethics and their morality as class hypocrisy. Interestingly, he did not debunk ethics nor morality as some others on the Left had done.

Just one example may suffice as “Gael”, his pseudonym for his column in the Justice newspaper, let rip on a Glasgow clergyman, “CA.”

“He must be unconscious of a great German ethical invasion, headed by one named Karl Kautsky. He must not have heard our orators preach from texts entitled “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou halt not kill” “Thou shalt not lie” “Thou shalt not prostitute “ and so on. These preachments are certainly not to the taste of parsons and elders, because these gentle souls are most politely informed, in exquisitely choice language, that they steal from the poor, that they seduce youths into the armies and the navies to murder one another for the wealthy worshippers of Mammon, that they lie Sunday after Sunday in refraining from the exposure of the poverty of the people, and that they encourage prostitution by having in their churches employers who refuse to pay women a wage sufficient to provide the requirements of life. We Socialists do appeal to individuals; but our appeal is mainly to the masses to join together and break the chain of slavery. That is the most moral act that ever will have been accomplished, and its realisation is approaching with strides fast and furious. Individualism can be shown by Socialists to be scientifically unsound, and, if carried out logically breaks humanity into insulated units, completely separated each from the other. Without association of units there can be no morality. The densest dunce can surely fathom that primitive attempt at philosophical profundity. If Socialists are striving for a world an all-inclusive co-operative human society, they surely are advocates of the highest morality, as it would be the rock foundation for the brotherhood and sisterhood of all humanity.” – Scottish Notes, Justice, 7 June 1913.

I quote this hopefully to show that this was at one level your standard Social Democratic critique of the clergy but when you read deeper there is a real rage against those who have abused their positions of power and influence. This was not just confined to the Presbyterian brethren. A year earlier he had criticised the Catholic Church and the Irish Party for its hypocrisy on Socialism and urging the Catholic Socialist column in Forward to engage with this.

There is so much more that I could have put into the book on religious questions but did not want to totally bore my readers to death. That is why, while I don’t fall out with Allan’s view that MacLean was a secularist, it is a limiting definition. Secularists are not, in my experience, as interested in religion as MacLean was, nor do they take up debate in the ways in which MacLean did. My book brings out these examples of a remarkable engagement against his old Church. The “Pope of Marxism” (Kautsky) with his pseudo-Biblical texts had a fine Reforming, Scottish lieutenant.

I am not precious about how you would describe him but when Allan describes my description of John as a “convinced agnostic” as an oxymoron then I can only plead guilty to a dodgy sense of humour and an engagement with MacLean’s own writings:

“Many teachers, from deep conviction, are Agnostics…” This throwaway line from an article in Justice, 26 April 1913 reveals a lot. Many teachers? It may have been true but usually this type of language is a code isn’t it? I suppose my point is that secularists can dismiss religion and its view of society as MacLean indeed did. MacLean, however, engaged with religion (while drawing secular conclusions) from the days of the Pollokshaws’ Progressive Union in 1903 through to leafletting St. Mary’s Episcopalian Cathedral in Glasgow in 1921 with a convert’s enthusiasm.

Scotland and Ireland or Ireland and Scotland?

Allan gives a gentle challenge to my logic of placing my two chapters on MacLean’s developing ideas on Scotland before the chapter on Ireland. As Allan succinctly put it:

“I also think that Maclean’s more considered understanding of the Scottish Question did not precede, but followed his growing interest in Ireland.”

The inference seems to be that this perhaps fits a left nationalist logic. I don’t fall out with this at all. Again, I tried to bring the logic in line with the logic of the book. The book is in two parts. The first part looks at MacLean’s life in the “Socialist Army” or the mainstream British Socialist movement. The second part looks at his break with British socialism and is entitled, “Ireland will only get her republic when Scotland gets hers.” This is a direct quote from MacLean towards the end of his life.

It was very important to me that I started with his leaflet, All Hail, the Scottish Workers Republic from August 1920. This is in no way chronological but highlights the break. His former comrades would have been bewildered to read this leaflet. Leaving aside the serious debate around the sneers and insinuations on MacLean’s mental state, some of his former comrades would have thought colloquially that he had taken leave of his senses! It was a revolutionary leaflet with a real statement of intent – to challenge the formation of a British Communist Party.

As Part 2 developed, Allan is absolutely correct in stating that here is a case for his links with Ireland to come next. I do feel, though, that it is right that the chapter on his developing Scottish republican politics comes next. This is where I disagree with my friend on this one. I believe that his interest in both causes arose simultaneously. There were two pushes in the republican direction. The end of the First World War and the debates within the Left on Scottish representation at the Peace Conference in Paris was one push. The other was the debates and discussions that he must have had in Peterhead with Barney Friel and Joe Robinson (both Irish Republican prisoners.) His prison papers have a Scotsman report of one of his first public meetings at a hustings in Glasgow where he was a Labour candidate A Sinn Fein speaker welcomed him as a true friend of Ireland and MacLean himself spoke of his “Highland spirit.”

Two pushes and there was one pull – himself. I do not see this as some sort of mid-life crisis as this belittles it. Men change too in very different ways from our sisters. We can rail out all sorts of anecdotal evidence. Just last week I was talking with a friend who works with me who is male and roughly my age. He is from a Polish background and it has never been more important to him than over the past few years – going back to family, learning the language, his faith. Just one example. And I was conscious that I did not want to transfer other experiences, including my own, onto MacLean but it jumped out at me in his own language and the assumptions he made. It just seemed the most human interpretation rather than ideology – nationalist, republican or otherwise.

I then consider the fact that MacLean had been talking about a Scottish Communist Republic in the summer of 1917 and the approaches from Ruaraidh Erskine of Mar on the Peace Conference and these tell this writer that MacLean was considering Scottish self-determination before his trip to Dublin in the summer of 1919. And while Allan is right to mention MacLean’s initial rebuff to Erskine from a Bolshevik viewpoint, it is also true that MacLean joined the National Committee to push for separate Scottish representation.

So it is fair to say that it was maybe not Georgia but it certainly was Scotland and Ireland that John MacLean had on his mind from late 1918 and those two countries and their differing predicaments led to his revolutionary leaflet of August 1920.

Labour in Scottish History

I really like Allan’s call for a “Labour in Scottish History.” There have been attempts. Jim Young made a fine stab with his The Rousing of the Scottish Working Class. This had some fantastic information and research but not the literary style or linkage to make it flow. Alan McCombes and Roz Paterson, some old comrades from the SSP days, have also brought out Restless Land: A Journey through Scotland’s Radical History. This is a very readable account of the Scottish working class story and would for a fine basis. Some of Allan’s own work on the Reformation (boo!) and the Covenanters (hiss!) would form fine chapters too. There may be a case for a combined effort from some of our best socialist and republican writers and researchers to produce a mirror to James Connolly’s masterpiece of Irish working class history.
Just for the record I am joshing with the boos and hisses!

I do hope that The Red and the Green is also a worthy contribution. I also feel that reviews such as Allan’s (and also by Stevie Coyle and Donald Anderson) have raised points for further research and debate. In terms of Allan’s review the point concerning the loyalist ‘carnival of reaction’ is certainly worth exploring. I would also add the socialist ‘reaction’ in adopting a Westminsterist, parliamentarian road that was mirrored by the Communist Party. This may not have been as ugly or sectarian but it was certainly reactionary. The British Road to Socialism was well named in every sense and was and is and will be a dead end. John MacLean was right in this regard and is an important part of his contribution to Left politics in these islands.

I would also like to echo Allan’s conclusion that Scotland’s democratic revolution needs to be a republican one. We have both pushed this Scottish republican line – with no apology – for years from different directions. I have no doubt the contradiction of an independent Scotland under the British Crown will be exposed for what it is. Back to 1603! That slogan doesn’t really work for me.

And just like the proverbial Lothians bus – you wait forever and then two come along. There is a new book coming out by Henry Bell. John Maclean – Hero of Red Clydeside. It can only be good if it gets us talking about MacLean, about socialism and political progress. That’s the pulling power of John MacLean.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/25/still-talking-about-john-maclean/feed/1ISRAEL – CLARITY AS TO THE REALITYhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/25/israel-clarity-as-to-the-reality/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/25/israel-clarity-as-to-the-reality/#commentsWed, 25 Jul 2018 14:38:00 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12645Netanyahu’s new Jewish Nation-State Act gives constitutional status to what has long been Israel’s reality. It is a racist apartheid-type state. Netanyahu’s confidence in stating this openly has come about because of the general drift to the Right of politics, underlined by Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in defiance of the UN. However, Tony Greenstein argues that the open racism of Netanyahu is preferable to the platitudes of liberal Zionism.

CLARITY AS TO THE REALITY

US White Nationalist, Richard Spencer has written “of his admiration for the law, which

confers the right to national self-determination in Israel the Jewish people alone, and

I realise that this may shock some of my friends. Why, some may ask, would someone who the Jewish Chronicle calls a veteran Jewish anti-Zionist,1 someone whom the president of the Board of Deputies, Jonathan Arkush, attacked for his “long record of noxious behaviour”,(2) support Netanyahu’s flagship policy of legislative racism?

Yes, the Jewish Nation-State Bill is racist and it is a declaration that Israel is officially an apartheid state. However, I prefer that Israel openly admits what kind of state it is rather than hiding behind circumlocutions such as “the only democratic state in the Middle East”. I agree with Abed Azab3 when I say that I prefer the enemy who stabs you in the front rather than waiting till your back is turned. At least that way you have a chance of defending yourself.

Back in May I wrote that Israel has officially declared itself an apartheid state.4 I stand by what I wrote, but I also welcome the brutal honesty and openness of the coalition government. Which was more preferable in South Africa? The hidden apartheid of Jan Smuts before 1948 or the open apartheid of Dr Malan and the Nationalists after 1948?

In an article in the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, it is argued that the bill, “which would have a constitution-like status, would prioritise Jewish values over democratic ones”.(5) Forgive me if I am wrong, but isn’t Israel already a Jewish state? When given the choice between the democratic path and the Jewish road, then Zionism has always chosen the latter.

We are told: “One controversial clause, which would permit the establishment of communities that are segregated by religion or nationality, was criticised last week by president Reuven Rivlin.” (6) Perhaps president Rivlin knows something that I don’t. Haven’t Jewish-only communities always been the norm in Israel? How many Arabs have belonged to the Jewish-only kibbutzim or moshavim? Or the hundreds of Jewish communities that were established in Israel post-1948? Did Rivlin call for disbandment of the Jewish National Fund, whose sole purpose is to ensure that the 93% of Israeli land which it owns or controls is reserved for the use of Jews? Have any of the left Zionist parties, from the Israeli Labor Party to Meretz, called for the winding up of the Jewish Agency and the repeal of the 1952 Jewish Agency Status Law?

Segregation

There has been a massive controversy over “one controversial clause”, which “would permit the establishment of communities that are segregated by religion or nationality”. Now forgive me for asking, but isn’t this what happens already? Did not the supreme court rule in 2000 in Kadan against such practices? Yet did not the knesset pass the Acceptance Committees Law, which effectively overturned Kadan? Of course, this law did not specifically mention that Arabs were not acceptable. It did not have to. The committees can adopt whatever criteria they want to when rejecting applicants.

According to rabbi Gilad Kariv, CEO of the Israeli Reform movement, “the nation-state bill is going to tarnish the Israeli law book”. Is this not excellent news? A law book that includes, according to Adalah, the legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel, over 65 racist and discriminatory laws is apparently going to be tarnished by this one law.(7) Surely this is a cause for celebration?

Has rabbi Kariv not heard of the 1950 Law of Return, which grants me the right to ‘return’ to a land I have only visited once, but denies that right to Palestinians whose families since time immemorial resided in Palestine? Or perhaps the good rabbi has not heard of the 1950 Absentee Property Law, which allowed property belonging to Arabs, even if they were in Israel during its war of independence, to be confiscated and its owners to be classified as ‘present absentees’ and thus forfeit their lands?

According to Daniel Sokatch, CEO of the New Israel Fund, the bill is a “danger to Israel’s future”. How can this be? What Sokatch means is that the bill is a threat to the Jewish nature of the Israeli state. It helps reveal the structure behind the democratic facade.

Sokatch began reciting a familiar fairy tale: “Beginning with Israel’s declaration of independence … the principle of the equality of all people have formed the democratic foundation of the state. This law is completely incompatible with those values. It … provides a legal basis to discriminate based on religion, race and sex.”(8)

Who would have guessed that at the very moment that David Ben Gurion was reading out these pious homilies over 300,000 Arabs had already been expelled from their homes and villages and that another half million were destined to share the same fate? Who would have believed that this ethnic cleansing would be accompanied by up to 30 massacres? That Israel’s Arab population would continue to live under military law until 1966?

So Netanyahu’s bill is welcome, if only to lay Sokatch’s myths to rest. To bury the lie about Israel’s formation. For sure, the declaration of independence waxed lyrical about developing Israel “for the benefit of all its inhabitants” and creating a state “based on freedom, justice and peace”, which would “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, irrespective of religion, race or sex”, and “guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture”. It can be safely said that all these noble sentiments were honoured in the breach.

Israel’s Arab citizens enjoyed none of the rights that Ben Gurion talked about in the declaration. On the contrary, the Mapai government proceeded to enact a series of racist laws whose purpose was to effect the dispossession of the Arab minority and legalise the theft of their land. I can only assume that Sokatch is unaware of the existence of the Absentee Property Law, the Law of Return, the Nakba Law, the Citizenship and Entry Law, etc. This new law does little more than clarify the existing situation. Why is that not welcome? An honest racist is always more preferable than a dishonest one. Admirable though they were, the sentiments in the declaration of independence have never been incorporated into Israeli law.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, explained the motivation behind the criticism of the bill. The Jewish Nation State Bill “will make Israel an open target on the world stage for all those who seek to deny the Jewish people our right to a homeland”.9 Precisely. His criticism is made in defence of the status quo in Israel.

In other words, the bill will make explicit that which has always been implicit. When rabbi Jacobs speaks of denying Jews their “right to a homeland”, what he really means is their right to continue to colonise Israel and Palestine. Because I and millions of Jews in the diaspora already have a home. It is where we live – in Britain, America, France, etc. We do not need a second home. The “Jewish people” – a figment of the imagination of anti-Semites and Zionists through the ages – do not need a Jewish state. What would be of benefit though is that in the 21st century the Israeli state normalises itself and transforms itself from a state of the Jews to a state of all its people. Ethno-nationalist states died out in Europe in the 1930s and 40s with the defeat of fascism. It was only in Israel and South Africa that such a political formation survived.

When rabbi Jacobs complains that the bill “hurts the delicate balance between the Jewish majority and Arab minority”, he is engaged in sophistry. What balance would that be? The balance that led to the uprooting and demolition of the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev in order to make way for the Jewish town of Hiran?(10) Or perhaps he means the edict of Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed, forbidding Jews to rent rooms or apartments to Arabs?(11) Perhaps this “delicate balance” was evidenced in the freezing of plans for expansion in Kfar Vradim after Arabs were successful in nearly half the bids for new housing?(12) Or was it the demonstrations in Afula after an Arab family successfully bought a house there?(13)

‘Democracy’

The 14 groups making up the Jewish Federation of North America argued that the bill would eliminate “the defining characteristic of a modern democracy”, such as “protecting rights for all”.(14) The problem is that the rights of Israeli Arabs have long since gone unprotected.
For example, in the history of the Israeli state just one Jewish demonstrator has been killed by the police (in 1951), who have repeatedly killed Arab demonstrators. The murder of school teacher Yakub Musa Abu al-Kiyan in Umm al Hiran last year, who was left to bleed to death, was particularly egregious.(15) In any normal democratic state the village would not, of course, even have been demolished. The police firing on an innocent man would have led to a judicial inquiry. Instead the murdered man was first demonised as an Islamic State terrorist and, when it was proved that the policeman who died was killed as a result of an out-of-control car, there was a cover-up. The life of Arabs in the Israeli state is cheap compared to Jewish life.

It should be obvious that what has aroused the ire and anger of the major American Jewish organisations is not the systematic discrimination that Palestinians, both within and without Israel, have suffered. Their real concerns are for the damage that has been and is being caused to the reputation of Israel by Netanyahu’s open racism as evidenced by this Bill.

The American Jewish Federation’s objection is not to separation and segregation, but writing this segregation down in law. From schooling16 to maternity wards,(17) Israel is a segregated society. It is a society where an Arab poet can be arrested, jailed and convicted for writing a poem,(18) yet a leader of Lehava, Benzi Gopstein, remains free despite threatening to burn down churches and mosques.(19) Israel is a society where the leader of the Northern Islamic Leagues, Raed Salah, can be jailed on disputed evidence for alleged anti-Semitism,(20) yet the authors of Torat HeMelech, which explains how to kill non-Jews legally, according to halacha, remain at liberty.(21)

It is therefore to be regretted that the clause which sanctioned “a community composed of people having the same faith and nationality to maintain the exclusive character of that community” has been replaced with a clause calling for “strengthening the Jewish presence in predominantly Arab Israeli areas”. The latter refers to the policy of Jewish-only settlement, Judaisation, of areas such as the Negev and Galilee. However, it is best not to spell this out.

The Jewish Nation-State Bill offers unprecedented clarity as to the reality of what a Jewish state means in practice. That is why the Jewish Federation of North America, which has not been known for championing the rights of Palestinians, took fright. For our part, we should not be afraid.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/25/israel-clarity-as-to-the-reality/feed/2LESSONS OF THE RED (REPUBLICAN) STATES TEACHER STRIKEShttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/25/lessons-of-the-red-republican-states-teacher-strikes/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/25/lessons-of-the-red-republican-states-teacher-strikes/#respondWed, 25 Jul 2018 14:13:29 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12643Eric Chester has sent in this article form Jack Gerson, a teacher activist on California, about the teacher strikes in

West Virginia, Kentucky and Arizona.

LESSONS OF THE RED (REPUBLICAN) STATES TEACHER STRIKE

Striking teachers in West Virginia

Last Saturday (June 9), I attended the “Lessons of the Red States Teacher Strikes” forum featuring teacher leaders of the mass education strikes in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Arizona. The forum, held in Oakland, California at a local public high school (Oakland Tech) was organized by the Oakland teachers’ union and co-sponsored by the San Francisco, Berkeley and Richmond (California) teachers’ unions. Here are my impressions and observations about this event.

1. The speakers were inspiring, individually and collectively. The women – all four are women – were courageous, resolute, and brilliant organizers. Most readers will probably already know this from the widespread coverage of the red state strikes. If not, I think that this summary, brief as it is, will make this clear.

2. The stated aim of the event was to learn how the red state organizers had carried out the most impressive labor actions in decades despite what had hitherto been considered insurmountable obstacles – weak state unions, anti-strike legislation, lack of collective bargaining, no dues check-off – and to build on these to launch coordinated local and / or statewide actions in California. The organizers had anticipated filling Oakland Tech’s 800-seat auditorium and hoped for a large turnout from younger teachers and community, based on the overwhelmingly positive response to the red state strikes. But only somewhere between 200 and 300 showed up, very few under 50 years old. The majority were veteran Bay Area leftists.

3. In any event, the talks by the red state teacher leaders were inspirational as well as educational. They each talked about how they were able overcome anti-strike legislation and build mass strikes despite the weakness of state and local unions. In all three states – West Virginia, Kentucky, Arizona (and I believe that this was true in Oklahoma and North Carolina too) – the organizers worked outside of the formal union structures, using social media to reach out to, and build networks of, initially hundreds, then thousands, and now tens of thousands (For example: ongoing networks of 24,000 in West Virginia, and of 55,000 in Arizona.) Although the core of these organizations are schoolworkers and have developed networks of school leaders at the local and school levels, they don’t restrict their membership to teachers: The networks include both union members and non-members; public school teachers and charter school teachers; certificated staff (teachers) and classified staff (clericals, janitors, food service workers, etc.). They don’t restrict themselves to traditional union issues, or even to strictly educational issues – for example, the West Virginia teachers demanded and won a 5% across the board pay increase for all West Virginia public employees, not just teachers, while one of the key issues taken up by the Kentucky movement is how to address gang violence.

In these ways, these organizations are breaking out of the insularity, conservatism, and bureaucratic inertia of virtually the entire union leadership at national, state, and even local levels. It’s reminiscent of Occupy in Fall 2011; of the Spring 2011 Oakland bank campaign (where Oakland teachers and community allies campaigned to “Bail Out Schools Not Banks and End Foreclosures”, culminating in occupation of Wells Fargo’s downtown Oakland branch, where seven teachers were arrested (I was one of those seven); of the June / July 2012 sit-in to protest school closures at Oakland’s Lakeview Elementary, organized by teachers, parents, and community. (For those who remember, it’s reminiscent of the “struggle group” concept in the old IS circa 1970, which was counterposed to the traditional rank and file union caucus approach.) Importantly: it’s not just posing the need for teacher unions to “reach out to the community”, but rather the need for alternative forms of organization that can work inside and outside the union, uniting union members with non-members and with the community around demands that cut across traditional parochial / insular lines. But apparently local teacher union leaders are not taking away this lesson (for example, Oakland teacher union president-elect Keith Brown, who chaired the June 9 forum, began his concluding remarks by observing that the key lesson to be learned from the speakers is that “we need to reach out to the community”. I barely was able to restrain myself from yelling out “Oh come on Keith, you’ve known that all along.”)

Rather, to reemphasize at the risk of redundancy: the key lesson here is the importance of building what could be called “classwide organizations” – organizations that operate inside and outside the workplace, that include union members and non-members, teachers and non-teachers; that take up educational and non-educational issues (e.g., environmental issues); etc.

An equally important lesson is to not be constrained by the fear of strikes being labeled “illegal”. If the organization is strong enough, with enough support among school workers and enough support in the community, the courts and the legislature are likely to fold – as they did in the red state strikes.

4. I think that the very weakness of their unions was a key to the strikes’ success. In states where teacher unions are strong, dues checkoff is used to build full-time, often highly paid, central union staff whose world view is closer to that of management than it is to the everyday worker. The officials and staffers far more often than not act as a brake on struggle, urging and when they can imposing a passive, legalistic strategy (at best). Case in point, the 3-million-member National Education Association (NEA) and its largest affiliate, the 300,000-plus member California Teachers Association (CTA). CTA has used dues check-off (“the agency shop”) to funnel the bulk of member dues to its highly paid and privileged staff and officers. The hundreds of CTA staffers are paid nearly double the salaries of classroom teachers. For decades, they, argued that “we’re too weak” to organize effectively against charter schools; that we have to “collaborate” with big business and with school management; that strikes can’t win, so we have to “compromise” (read: agree to rotten contracts), etc. They stacked the deck, taking the lead in negotiating contracts that expire at different times in different districts, and then turning around and arguing that coordinated strikes are a non-starter because contracts expire at different times. Militants who argued for even building local strikes were labeled “strike-happy”. Most “progressives” and “progressive caucuses” fell in line. A few examples:

• CTA pulled the plug on its 2003 initiative to reform California Proposition 13 to tax corporate property more heavily (they caved to pressure from the Chamber of Commerce, who behind the scenes threatened to go after dues check-off).

• CTA staff and the Oakland teacher union president meekly and unilaterally called off a strike with a bad, last-minute deal in spring 2006. Four years later, CTA staff and a different OEA president postponed striking for months, and then limited it to one day with no followup (despite its being over 90% effective, and despite the school district having imposed rotten terms on the union.)

• The “progressive” leadership of the Los Angeles teachers union called off a walkout of tens of thousands of teachers when a judge issued an injunction with fines of $1 million / day if they struck.

• In 2009, CTA sent staff from district to district, warning local unions to accept downsizing, including layoffs, in order to “protect our contractual gains” – i.e., wages and benefits.
The red state strikes show that there’s another way, a better way: organize to fight, for a classwide fight, an inclusive fight around classwide demands, rather than meek, legalistic acquiescence.

5. Two more points:

a. Mass media contrasts teacher salaries in California with those in the red states and implies – or states outright – that strikes occurred in those states because teacher pay was so low. But when adjusted for inflation, average pay in California is not much higher than in, say, West Virginia – and average pay in several large urban districts (e.g., Oakland) is actually lower than the average in the red states. Moreover, the red state strikes were not just about teacher pay: a key unifying demand was more money for education. The mass media implies that California and other “blue” states put much more money per capita into education than the red states. Not so. California, despite having the fifth largest economy in the world (behind only China, the U.S., Germany and Japan) is 41st of the 50 states in education spending per capita – well behind, for example, West Virginia.

b. The red state strikes blow apart the “lesser evil” argument in multiple ways: First, many strikers actually were / are Trump supporters, and see him as shaking up the status quo that has brought them lower wages, insecurity, raised their rents, taken away their homes, left their family members jobless and their children with poor prospects. Second, in blue states like California, the Democrats – far from being the opponents of privatization, charter schools and downsizing that they’ve been made out to be in the mass media, have been its advocates.
Take the example of Oakland, where I taught and was active in the teacher union. For the past 20 years, Oakland has been ground zero in the assault on public education. In 2003, the state put the Oakland public schools in receivership, a move orchestrated by Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad (supported by his billionaire friends Reed Hastings and John Doerr) and his long-time ally, then- Oakland mayor and now California governor Jerry Brown. Broad, Bill Gates and company turned the Oakland schools into a laboratory for privatization: under the state takeover enrolment in charter schools more than quadrupled while enrollment in public schools fell by one-third; the state moved in ostensibly because of a $37 million budget deficit, and left seven years later after tripling it – turning it into a $110 million debt, which to this day the state insists that the district must repay in full with interest; more than half the schools in Oakland were closed or reorganized, the libraries were shut down in nearly all middle schools and in several high schools, custodial workers were laid off, etc. Under the state takeover, Oakland had per capita double the rate of outsourcing to private contractors and double the administrative overhead of the average California school district.

While Oakland was a laboratory, the Democrats nearly everywhere supported the policies of downsizing, charter schools, test-based accountability, school closures, outsourcing, and privatization. The assault on public education was bipartisan – its most ardent advocates included Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy and California Congressman George Miller (the two leading proponents of the No Child Left Behind legislation), and President Barack Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan.

It’s also important to consider that in the “red states” Republican legislators responded to mass pressure by at least partially caving, fearing that they’d lose their jobs and their legislative majorities in the next elections. But in “blue” California, the Republican Party has nearly collapsed in the most populous parts of the state. The Democrats have lockdown control of the state legislature as well as the governor, and they have little fear of losing same. So they feel little constraint to do more than pay lip service to education, and can be expected to continue the same policies that they have for decades: providing inadequate funding for education (again: California ranks 41st of the 50 states in that regard); supporting charter schools (or whatever comes down the pipe in place of charter schools, should the bloom come off that rose); supporting test-based accountability (or whatever repressive variant comes down that pipe); supporting state takeovers of local school districts, thus taking control out of the hands of the public (just as charter schools do – charter schools receive public funding but are privately controlled). Is it any wonder that so many working class folks have been repelled by the Democrats’ austere neoliberalism, and that at least some have turned to Trump?

6. Problems: Where do the red state strike organizers go from here? They know that they need to consolidate their gains and to spread them nationally. But who can they reach out to? They look to who they see – ostensible “progressive” locals, like Oakland and San Francisco and Los Angeles. But the teacher leaders in the sponsoring locals have a past and present connection to CTA and its policies. And their own records.

It’s important to see things as they really are. That can be a downer. So far too often, far too many leftists act as cheerleaders and, willfully or not, wind up contorting and distorting facts to fit their desires. Thus, Jeff Mackler, national secretary of the group Socialist Action, recently wrote an article hailing the Oakland teachers’ union (OEA) as the most militant teacher union in the country, saying that the union has launched five strikes over “the past decades”. Well, yes – if you go back far enough. But over the past 22 years, OEA has gone out for exactly one day, and the OEA officers and CTA staff resisted even that.

And OEA has been far from the worst – inadequate as it’s been, it’s still far better than most. Now, I don’t want to write off the newly elected OEA leadership out of hand. But they – and the other local union officials – are not going to act much differently than in the past UNLESS there’s an eruption from below. We certainly shouldn’t look to CTA or NEA or AFT to take the lead. Quite the opposite, as we’ve argued above. And I’m not hopeful about the local leaders, either. Maybe some will be on the right side – but I think that if that happens, it will be because they will be reacting to motion from below, not taking the lead in unleashing it.

7. Meanwhile: How to proceed in places like Oakland, where the teacher union has been out of contract since last June. And in other California school districts – especially large urbans.

First: Build a network, if possible with contacts in every school in your district. This has been a foundation for building towards strikes in the past: in Chicago in 2012; in Arizona earlier this year; etc. In the past, this has been best done by releasing several teachers from classroom duties temporarily to go from school to school, holding school meetings, making contacts, identifying teachers who can act as shop stewards / representatives for their schools, etc. Based on the red state teacher experiences, this probably ought to be combined with social media outreach.

Second: Don’t base everything on waiting for the state and local union leaderships to act. As one of the red state teacher leaders said on Saturday, “They’re not our bosses. We’re their bosses.” Outline steps towards building a strike – including building a network with contacts in as many schools as possible, and reach out beyond union lines to non-members, teachers in other districts, classified schoolworkers, community members, etc. Reach out beyond narrow bread and butter issues, and even beyond simply educational issues. And be ready for state, national, and local leaders to get in the way, unless / until you’ve built sufficient strength. For example, they may say that coordinated strikes would be illegal when many districts are still bound by contractual no-strike clauses (CTA, NEA, AFT, etc. have for decades had a passive, legalistic approach. That’s why there have been hardly any teacher strikes in California over the past twenty years. To repeat a point made earlier: Oakland, hailed as a model of teacher militancy by some “progressives”, has struck for exactly one day since 1996.)

8. Finally, it’s time to draw some hard conclusions about the state of the unions, and not just teacher unions. For decades, the unions have operated on the “team concept” – collaboration with management and the state. The international union leaderships have, for the most part, supported – even participated in – U.S. imperialism’s exploitative international policies. At home, they have urged labor peace, acquiescing meekly to the bosses while turning a mailed fist towards rank and file militants. AFT President Randy Weingarten states this clearly in an open appeal to the ruling class to take the side of union leadership on the impending Janus court case, which if it carries would outlaw dues checkoff. Weingarten said:

“The funders backing the Janus case and the Supreme Court justices who want to eliminate collective bargaining with the hope that such a move would silence workers need only to look at West Virginia for what will happen if they get their way. A loss of collective bargaining would lead to more activism and political action, not less. Collective bargaining exists as a way for workers and employers to peacefully solve labor relations.”

That’s a pretty clear statement of class collaboration, isn’t it? Weingarten says to the ruling class: “Look out below. We union bureaucrats are what’s standing between you and the wrath of the masses.” In that regard, we should recall that the storied labor mass militancy of the 1930s was largely carried out, successfully, without collective bargaining and often “illegally”. And now the same is true for the red state teacher strikes. That should at least give us pause, and cause to think further about the deal that brought about labor peace at the end of the 1930s, exchanging collective bargaining and a piece of the pie for no-strike contracts, no-strike pledges, and permanent state intervention and regulation of labor.

Dues checkoff is double edged: the Janus case is part of a virulent right wing attempt to destroy unions, period. And this is something that we all need to oppose. But we need to be aware that if Janus is defeated, the union leaderships will continue with their course of using members’ dues to strengthen their bureaucratic stranglehold and to try to keep their foot on the neck of potential militant struggle. I think that the red state teacher strikes, and particularly their alternative forms of organizing and organization, inside and outside the unions, and their classwide membership and demands, poses an important alternative model. It’s one that we need to try to work with and deepen. We need to all look at ways to broaden and sustain such a model – hitherto, the model has been inspiring during the upsurge (e.g., the first few months of Occupy) but has not endured. Unions, on the other hand, have been able to consolidate the gains won in strikes and other contract struggles – but have done so by strengthening a central bureaucracy and by more and more collaborating with management and integrating with the state.

When exiled Catalan minister Clara Ponsati spoke recently in Edinburgh she had to explain why the Spanish Constitution was not a mechanism of popular protection, but a way of ordering the transition from the Franco dictatorship to a world acceptable to the Spanish elite and international imperialism. The Spanish state promoted the illusion that the referendum and the declaration of independence were against the law and a popularly agreed constitution. Regrettably, the way the so-called democratic transition was manipulated into existence is badly understood outside of Spain.

Catalonia Reborn cannot explain this in the detail required, but alerts the reader about some of the main features involved. This, of course, is not the purpose of the book but the reader is warned enough so as not to take the Spanish government’s claims as good coin. Nevertheless, it is essential to outline the history of Catalonia and Spain to explain the resentments. The authors cite the intentions of Manuel Fraga, the main figure early in the change, “The transition is, basically, a process of historical and social amnesia … achieving the unheard of situation in which the dictatorship’s juridico-political framework became the source of legitimacy for the new democratic model.” (p105) This was known in Spanish as the Pacto de Olvida, the pact of forgetting. Acquiescence was achieved by a mixture of bribery to each region creating different rights so that they would be at each other’s throats as well as constant threats of military coups including the attempted one in 1982. The constitution was endorsed 1n 1978 in a referendum with only some Basques (Partido Nacionalista Vasco) voting against it.

Spain’s unusual history left Catalonia and the Basque country industrialised anomalies in the backward Spanish kingdom. The discovery of the American continent initially enriched Spain but it kept losing its advantages to better industrialised rivals mainly Holland, France and the United Kingdom. The centralising tendencies in capitalism failed and cities did not grow, industry was ignored to maintain large-scale agriculture.

This weakened Spain against its rivals. Leon Trotsky summarized these consequences. “The meagreness of the national resources … foster[ed] separatist tendencies. Particularism appears in Spain with unusual force, especially compared with neighbouring France, where the Great Revolution finally established the bourgeois nation, united and indivisible, over the old feudal provinces. … While not permitting the formation of a new bourgeois society, the economic stagnation also corroded the old ruling classes. The proud noblemen often cloaked their haughtiness in rags. The church plundered the peasantry, but from time to time it was plundered by the monarchy, who as Marx said, had more in common with Asiatic despotism than with European absolutism.” This led to periodic military revolts. These were not revolutions to establish a new class power but were “the chronic convulsions expressing the intractable disease of a nation thrown backward.”1

Surprisingly, the authors make little of the common features surrounding why Scotland merged with England and Catalonia with Spain. Though the former was a voluntary union in late feudal/ early bourgeois terms; Catalonia was absorbed after a military defeat. The War of the Spanish Succession terrified the English ruling stratum that Scotland’s elite may choose to side with the French so much that they became eager to absorb Scotland into political union. The Scottish elite got to share in the spoils of the lucrative American slave trade while the Catalans may have lost their national independence they kept their more advanced agriculture eventually allowing the capital formation necessary for the industrialisation that did not occur elsewhere in Spain. “Catalonia was to follow England in introducing market capitalism into agriculture, boosting productivity and output through owner cultivation and land consolidation.” (p40)

Catalans speak a language that has a long history though to outsiders it may appear as a hybrid of French and Spanish. Spanish repression of the Catalan language began in 1715 when the Bishop of Segorbe demanded there be “one king, one law, one currency […] one language, by which the use of Castilian could be prohibited.”2 This remained a policy until Franco died enforced with sackings, beatings and fines. Now 73.2% of the population speak Catalan and around eight television channels and a hundred radio stations broadcast in the language.

Uprisings occurred across Spain from the early years of the twentieth century, especially in the years between 1917 and 1923 when the dictatorship of general Miguel Primo de Rivera imposed itself. The anarcho-syndicalist trade union the CNT was formed quickly building a mass membership in Barcelona and Catalonia. The fall of his successor General Berenguer in 1931 sees the republicans win elections in all major towns and the Borbon king abdicates. The Second Republic is declared. The transformation of Spain begins. Apart from a brief period when Catholic royalists hold power the republic holds together until a military coup occurs led by General Francisco Franco in April 1936.

In 1931 the Generalitat, the autonomous Catalan government is established; in 1934 the President Luis Companys declares independence. It is at this time that various observers describe Barcelona and much of Catalonia as being in the hands of the working class, the bourgeoisie having fled or deserted over to the fascists or Franco. “Without exaggeration, it is possible to describe Catalonia between mid-1936 and the start of 1939 as the first and (to date) only fully socialist state ever to emerge in Western Europe.” (p76) This probably is an exaggeration but as the authors point out all companies over a hundred employees were collectivised and placed under workers’ control, all being placed under the central co-ordination of the Catalan Economic Advisory Council, banks were placed under the direct control of the Generalitat, though not nationalised. Peasants were given their land and some lands liberated by military force collectivised. Many other important economic and social were put in place.

The divisions between those that wished to further the social revolution to win the war and those who wanted to win the war first to then launch the social revolution was becoming profound. The May days of 1937 led to major clashes between them when Communist Party controlled troops tried to dislodge anarchist workers and troop from Barcelona’s main telephone exchange. They were spontaneously resisted by thousands of anarchist workers and fighting left large numbers dead. It is from this date that many see the end of the republic because it no longer became relevant in the eyes of many. Quickly the policy became strangle the revolution then lose the war. It is amazing how timid the leaders of the Spanish and Catalan republics were; their desire was to make a compromise with Franco’s armies. Franco thought otherwise. The Spanish republic fell, making an evacuation to Barcelona before it fell. In Catalonia Paul Preston wrote, “22,700 people were arrested in the first eight months. Precisely because those of political or military significance had fled, those killed by the rebels in Catalonia were perhaps fewer than might have been expected. Between those murdered by the occupying troops those tried and executed, more than 1,700 were killed in Barcelona. 750 in Lleida, 703 in Tarragona and five hundred in Girona. Many more died from mistreatment in prison.”3

The book’s strength is that is follows the politics of Catalonia from Franco’s death up to the present day (December 2017). It outlines the way corruption is integral to the Spanish state, arising from the Franco’s time. The way the Spanish state is concentrated around certain financial and industrial concerns and politically expressed firstly through the Partido Popular as well as the other main parties. “[F]ar from being an aberration, corruption is an integral part of the 1978 regime. Post-Franco Spain is akin to post-Communist Russia and China, where the privatisation of state assets led to the creation of a corrupt oligarchy with close relations to the ruling party. Second as an integral part of the 1978 regime’s bureaucratic architecture, the judiciary is heavily politicised. As a result, this judiciary acts as a bulwark against the effective prosecution of corrupt cases.” (p137) The recent fall of Spanish President Mario Rajoy -too late for the book- was a consequence of his involvement in the Gurtel corruption case that is touched upon in the text.

A necessary detour to highlights how police-army-mafia type death squads were used to kill off prominent Basques shows how the state has not left its fascistic past behind.

The so-called Catalan nationalist parties did vigorously pursue policies of national independence. Covergència i Unió led by Jordi Pujol ran the Generalitat for twenty three years making deals with Spanish parties to obtain devolution settlements. “When Pujol quit the CiU [Artur] Mas was able to see off the old man’s sons and hangers-on and grab the reins of power … a brilliant political operator … he is also the embodiment of that wing of Catalan capital which relies on the art of the manoeuvre to defend its material interests.” (p186) This stratagem of playing Barcelona against Madrid and other political parties against each other came to an end when on Catalonia’s national day (September 11th) 2012 one-and-a-half million protested although the streets of Barcelona against the Spanish Constitutional Court striking down the new Statute of Autonomy.

The protests were organised by a new “cultural” civic formation the Assemblea Nacional Catalana. A snap election was called but the CiU lost twelve seats while the outright secessionist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) and the Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP) gained. Mas stayed on a Prime Minister only by obtaining ERC support. Despite Madrid’s opposition, a non-binding popular referendum took place on Sunday, November 9th, 2014. Madrid simply ignored the result. After fresh elections took place almost a year later under the banner Together for Yes (Junts pel Sí) a coalition of independence parties won. As a condition Mas was dropped and Carles Puigdemont became President.

Puigdemont, whose political party sits with Liberal Democrats in the European Union, was an unlikely revolutionary. But the movement was clear in its aims. A new referendum was to be called but, this time, involving mass popular mobilisation. It was set for the 1st of October 2017. The Spanish Constitutional Court declared it illegal. “As well as prohibiting the national post office from mailing out any election materials, the Spanish authorities blocked 140 pro-referendum websites. The night before the vote, Guardia Civil units raided the Catalan government’s data and communications hub … Seizing the printed ballot papers and ballot boxes was a particular target for the Guardia … Police proceeded to raid print shops and other businesses confiscating literary millions of ballot papers and hundreds of ballot boxes.” (p193)

And that was before polling began. The writers go through the many manoeuvres that occurred by the many volunteers to outwit the police and authorities as well as how the level of violence that was used. Despite these obstructions, the polling day was a national carnival of joy and anticipation. International observers were clear that all the impediments did not really stop a free and fair election, even if those who were opposed to the referendum did not vote. After a few days Spain’s chief prosecutor had charged Puigdemont and every minister with rebellion, sedition, and misuse of public funds for organising the rebellion. Some were arrested while others fled. Mass protests have become a constant feature of Catalonian life. The spontaneously organised Committees for the Defence of the Republic have started to develop ways of carrying out popular defence from attacks.

One major criticism of the Catalan leadership is that they do not place “themselves directly into the Spanish national debate, other than by calling for a new Statute of Autonomy, or latterly to declare UDI.” Another is that they have failed to reassure Spaniards and other foreign nationals currently living Catalonia.

Catalonia has ceased to be a non-historic nation and has become central not only to Catalans but Spain and Western Europe. It shows the self-serving interest s of the Eurocrats who want to keep the EU as an elite club for the rich and powerful. It also shows up the pretensions of the many nationalists who want to keep Spain and the so-called international community on side by refusing to stridently give support to their unilateral declaration of independence.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/20/catalonia-a-nation-thrown-forward/feed/1THE ‘CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY’ – A RATIFICATION REFERENDUMhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/20/the-crisis-of-democracy-a-ratification-referendum/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/20/the-crisis-of-democracy-a-ratification-referendum/#commentsFri, 20 Jul 2018 20:39:39 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12623The Campaign for a European Republican Socialist Party distributed the following leaflet the Radical Independence Campaign AGM in Glasgow on June 30th.

100,000 ANGLO-EUROPEANS ON THE MARCH ON 23rd JUNE IN LONDON-

For a Ratification Referendum

20,000 ANGLO-BRITISH ON THE MARCH ON 5th May IN LONDON

For Brexit and Tommy Robinson

For a Peoples Vote on Tory Brexit Deal

On 23rd June 100,000 people marched through London demanding the right to vote on the anti-working class Tory All-British or Unionist Exit deal. There were Scottish saltires and Welsh dragon flags but it was mainly an Anglo-European demonstration.

In 2016 England voted by 15 million to 13 million to leave the EU. The Tories had fixed the outcome by denying millions of EU citizens, resident and paying taxes in the UK, their right to vote. Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain. The Tories and the Right seized the EU referendum to impose a Unionist British Exit on Scotland and Ireland.

The Tory imposed Brexit proves to all doubters that the right of nations to self determination does not exist. It has led to a direct threat to the limited rights of the Scottish parliament. In the post-Brexit world the stability of the British Union depends on the centralisation of Crown powers in Whitehall. Those who niavely believe that Scotland will be allowed to hold a second Indie Refererendum are in for a nasty surprise.

Crown, Parliament or People – who decides on the Tory Unionist Exit?

We all have to make a choice. The Tory Deal has to be ratified by either the Crown or Parliament or the People (i.e. the people of the nations of England, Ireland. Scotland and Wales). The Crown intends to make its own homework and declare it the best possible deal. They do not want Westminster to have a “meaningful vote”. Take it or have something worse?

Nobody should trust the Crown or Westminster with such a decision. That is what doing nothing means in practice. We, the people, have to take back control. This is why 100,000 were on the march. It is not going to stop there. A week earlier nearly 20,000 Anglo-British fascists and UKIPers are also mobilising on a much bigger scale than ever before. They are ready to fight tooth and nail against a peoples vote.

Scotland holds the key to unlocking our democratic future

The Scottish people had had two referenda – on Scottish independnence and on membership of the EU. A majority voted to remain in the UK and in the EU. In the first case the British Crown was overjoyed that the Scottish people voted to stay in the UK. In the second the Crown decided to ignore Scotland’s democratic mandate and force Scotland to leave the EU in the name of Unionism.

Should Scotland wait until May and the Tory government have imposed a Unionist Exit on Scotland? Or should Scotland fight for its right to self determination now in alliance with millions of democratic voices in England with the intention of derailing or deafeating Tory Unionist Brexit?

The radical left in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales must lead the fight for democracy and self national determination. RIC became the voice of the radical left in Scotland during the 2014 Scottish referendum. Now RIC must provide a lead in the new situation following the 2016 EU referendum.

The siren calls of ‘Disaster Socialism’.

There is a strand of anti-working class politics – ‘Disaster Socialism’ – which believes that the worse it gets for the working class the better it will be for socialism. The people need to be woken up by disaster and tradegy. An economoic recession, poverty starvation will ‘teach” the stupid workers to change and get rid of capitalism. “After Hitler comes to power” said the Stalinists. “it will be our turn”.

A Unionist Exit from the EU will have distasterous economic and political consequences for working people in Scotland. But the idea that we should let it happen so that nationalists or socialists can pick up the pieces is a fundamental mistake. The struggle for Scotland’s right to hold IndieRef2 begins now. It begins with fighting to defeat Tory Unionist Exit before March 2019. It means ‘internationalism from below’ – working with democratic and working class forces in England by fight for a Peoples Vote on Tory Brexit Deal.

How to join our campaign?

If you want to get in contact or join our campaign please email us at:

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/20/the-crisis-of-democracy-a-ratification-referendum/feed/1“WE ARE THE SACRIFICE”http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/19/we-are-the-sacrifice/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/19/we-are-the-sacrifice/#commentsThu, 19 Jul 2018 23:21:22 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12611Socialist Democracy (Ireland) updates us on the consequences of the continuing slide to Right in the Six Counties.

“WE ARE THE SACRIFICE”

Belfast bonfire, 2018

Irish nationalism endorses Orange intimidation

If one thing links the political systems on both sides of the Irish border it is political corruption. Corruption so open, invasive and blatant that it would be comic if not so harmful. However the northern corruption has the added dimension of ongoing capitulation to loyalism, a capitulation that offers effective impunity to loyalist groups and has now reached the stage where the paramilitaries, in collaboration with the Democratic Unionist Party, are given a free hand to write the rules to suit themselves, setting the scene for the coming bonfire and Orange marching festival.

Yet this is not the full story. Sinn Fein, in Belfast City Council, has signed off on this arrangement, which they attempted to conceal from the public. The policy of capitulation has now been underlined by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in his handshaking ceremony with Orange bosses.

Nationalist workers facing intimidation during the coming hatefest should keep their heads well down. Nationalist leaders will not support them. The role of Sinn Fein and Varadkar also tell us that there are no restrictions on restoring a Stormont just as corrupt and sectarian as the defunct version that died in 2016.

Background

The background to southern corruption is well known. Story after story emerges from the police, the health service, education, charity, government, local government and so on. Garda leaders who lost their phones, politicians who front for property developers and women’s health sacrificed in outsourcing deals that also strip out key elements of health provision from the local structures. In the South the overwhelming corruption of a government acting as agent for European and other transnational capital is only rivalled by the rapacity with which they sponsor local landlordism and property speculation.

In the North stories of corruption are spiced with open criminality and sectarianism. The massive £500 million RHI cash for ash scam is only topped by the open alliance between the Democratic Unionist Party and paramilitary criminal gangs that are still formally classified as illegal.

Impunity

Yet what is striking in both states is the level of impunity. Criminal acts, the theft of public money, all occur in the open. Behind short lived shouts of protest lie a dull resignation and a conviction that nothing can be done.

Why is this? The welfare state is dying across Europe but it never fully arrived in Ireland. The welfare system imposed on Unionism by Britain is being demolished. The idea of a political and economic system that would deliver a decent life for all seems unreachable.

Workers vote for people they know are crooks. The reasoning is that if they steal for themselves they might steal something for their constituents. Even better, they might become a minister and a divert money to the area.

In the North the ideology of conflict resolution embedded in the peace process and in the political and social structures reset everything even more firmly in terms of sectarian division. The vast majority accept mass bribery and a large degree of legal impunity for loyalist groups and, to a much lesser extent, for Sinn Fein. They accept that there are few fully independent community groups and that Sinn Fein, the DUP and loyalist paramilitaries are embedded throughout civic society and soaking up public funds.

Ideology

One element of this acceptance is simple adaptation. This may not be the society that workers expected when they voted for the Good Friday Agreement, but it is the one they have and their main concern is to survive and try to build a decent life for themselves. Another factor among nationalists is defeat. Decades of struggle against the state have ended with their own leadership embracing that state. The sensation of defeat does not lead them to spontaneously resist but rather to hold more tightly to their existing leaders. Above all there is a belief that the system of bribery will succeed. After all, it worked with Sinn Fein and led to the disbandment of the IRA. It appears to have worked with demonstrations demanding permanent display of the union flag from public buildings (the “fleg” demonstrations) and with the Orange marches. Torrents of public money in excess of £50 million appeared to have settled the violent confrontation at Ardoyne. Further bribery of the loyalists should settle the violence and intimidation around loyalist bonfires, gradually decrease the level of loyalist thuggery and, if not leading to a democratic society, should at least lead to a low-level and fairly harmless rivalry between communities for resources.

Anything with challenges this belief is ignored. So it is not the case in any confrontation with loyalism that bribery by itself was enough. The bribery was always accompanied by major concessions to the loyalists. For example, in almost every case conflicts around Orange marches are resolved with the Orangemen continuing to march. The Ardoyne compromise involved the Orangemen continuing to march through the area on their outward trip and also involved a side deal where anti-internment marchers are now barred from the city centre.

Case study

A case study exposing the mechanisms of this culture of bribery recently unfolded at Belfast City Council’s Strategic Policy and Resources Committee, where “community groups” were awarded a combined £400,000 for “bonfire diversion”. The UDA-linked Belfast South Community Resources (BSCR), is getting £26k. BSCR is based in the Sandy Row area of Belfast. In the past it has been linked to the UDA and received money from Stormont’s controversial Social Investment Fund. SIF money bought a £700,000 Sandy Row office block, where veteran loyalist “brigadier” Jackie McDonald conducted UDA business. DUP MLA Christopher Stalford has his constituency office in the same block and was prominent in defence of a bonfire mob who seriously damaged private apartments in the area last July.

The DUP, the UVF front the PUP and Sinn Fein have form. Last year it was found that the council was storing bonfire materials, some of which were certainly stolen. They disappeared from council storage to reappear in loyalist hands. On this occasion the press were excluded from meetings, a call-in mechanism that would have allowed other councillors to challenge the decisions was removed from the process. Money went to community organisations closely linked to Sinn Fein and groups sponsored by the DUP, many other community initiatives went unfunded. To add insult to injury over £100,000 originally earmarked for a Belfast – European city of culture bid was thrown in the pot.

Nor did we have to wait long to see the results.East Belfast saw an announcement that the most dangerous bonfire of all, responsible for mass evacuation of local homes in 2017, is to be moved to the next street. Local loyalists will have their palms covered with silver and none of the issues of pollution and fire danger will be addressed. Simultaneously in East/South Belfast, both areas where “community groups” were financed by the City Hall, a voluntary protocol on flags was agreed within the narrow loyalist circle of the DUP and the loyalist paramilitaries. The flags will only fly from June until September, although if there is some delay in removing them the organisers are sure everyone will understand. Only legal flags will be flown; the union flag, the loyalist version of the Ulster flag and original UVF flag.

This distinction between legal and illegal flags is only of importance to the loyalists and as a cover for police inaction. To everyone else what is at issue is the long history of marking out territory and intimidation of nationalists. Any loyalist flag at your door carries the same message.

In fact it was last year that four Catholic families were intimidated by the UVF from Cantrell Close, an area in South Belfast especially built as a “shared space” where people could escape the widespread housing apartheid. The loyalists were given a blunt apologia by the DUP. Local MP Emma Pengelly toured the area with her henchmen and assured the press that the source of the intimidation was a mystery and that none of the remaining residents had any objection to the flags. Now, under the new convention, the flags (and new loyalist “anti-terrorism” banners) are flying in Cantrell Close. Pengelly’s sidekick, MLA Christopher Stalford, remarked that; “a shared space doesn’t have to be a neutral space.”

Underlying the chaos lies the fall of the local executive. That fall was part of a long decay. Many issues simply could not hope for unionist agreement and were simply parked for consultation- in effect a declaration by nationalism that they were willing to concede these issues. A recent example was a report on bonfires that is running indefinitely and has cost £600,000 so far without any conclusions. In the absence of an administration the local councils run the show. In areas dominated by unionists intimidation stays as before. Nationalist councils try to apply safely and pollution issues but are handicapped by their own wooing of the loyalists and by police unwillingness to uphold these rules when it comes to loyalism. In Belfast the practice of the sectarian deal has become an art form.

Loyalists write the rules

The end game in a long history of bribing and placating loyalism have led us to a strange place. The Loyalists get to write the rules and get paid for doing it. The other rules, the ones that are laws and are supposed to apply to all, no longer apply here. Because loyalist protocols come first, their victims are now powerless. “Why are you protesting? There is a protocol in place supported by City Hall!”

So rules about pollution, fire risk and the destruction of property no longer apply. Intimidation can now take place in an open way because only legal flags and “anti-terrorism” banners will be used to force residents out. The unofficial practice of the state in turning a blind eye is now official.

The cultural clash defined in the peace structures is now an overwhelming ideology. Sectarianism is now defined as anything that offends loyalism and is so universal that trade union leaders and sections of the reformist left hold to it. It is against this background that Sinn Fein can strike corrupt sectarian deals and there is nothing to keep them from returning to Stormont and rebooting the Assembly. They signed off on everything they were asked for in the last talks, but the DUP were unable to deliver even the most watery elements of an Irish language agreement and in any case no longer support devolution, preferring the direct protection of imperialism at Westminster.

We are the sacrifice

Yet Varadkar’s project of a modern 26 county state, economically conservative and socially liberal, looks doomed in the face of the ongoing corruption and the ever increasing demands of vulture capitalism and the Troika. His assertion that the 26 county state are simply neighbours a separate entity in the North flies in the face of popular support for Irish unity. Sinn Fein’s vote in the North, declining for years, shot upwards when they withdrew from the assembly. Many young supporters are unhappy with capitulation and the outcome of a return to devolution would be a further erosion of nationalist working class support for the party. Given that they party now look forward to coalition with Fine Gael in the Dail, their ability to retain a left image and the support of sections of the working class is in question.

One familiar loyalist theme is victimhood. “Their only crime was loyalty” is intoned over loyalist killers who were guilty of every other crime in the book except loyalty. There are frequent boozy recitations of the 1912 Kipling poem “Ulster” proclaiming; “we are the sacrifice.”

Last year workers who wanted to escape housing apartheid in accommodation especially built as part of the Good Friday Agreement were sacrificed to loyalist intimidation. This year that sacrifice was sanctified by Irish nationalism.

The issue should never be in what direction the Scottish national independence movement should go but what is the best way a new Scotland can be created. It is from this approach that the future political movements can be built. Organisations and movements can limp from political crisis to another if they fail to critically examine their initial purposes. Self-censorship in order to obtain a Yes vote may produce an outcome that could be very undesirable.

An “independent” Scotland under the Queen with the existing arrangement of aristocratic titles and supranational, interfering crown powers, suffering under non-stop European Union austerity measures designed to strengthen Central bankers while pretending sympathy for the migrants its imperialist policies have created, locked inside a military alliance many of whose members carry out aggression abroad and repression at home is unlikely to enthuse large numbers of previously disenfranchised voters.

It may not be possible to re-activate the energies that were unleashed in the run-up to the Scottish independence referendum of 2014. They cannot be switched off and on like water from a tap. The Scottish National Party has been the dominant political force advocating national independence. The Yes campaign was independent of the SNP, but the only party arguing the independence case with a mass base was the SNP. Therefore shifts in SNP policy indicated the kind of national independence the SNP was pursuing. Despite its enormous growth in membership, it still seems unable to create any shift in the popular mood moving towards national independence. The absence of any meaningful organised wider yes movement means that an important eye will always be the dominant nationalist force.

Its electoral representation has always been understated in Westminster by that institution’s practices. A very clear example of how an institution can impede a consciousness. It only gained power in the Scottish Parliament in 2007 allowing it to change its name from the Scottish Executive to the Scottish government. Support for Scottish national independence was never really directly tested until the referendum of 2014. This threw up the result of 55.3% against with 45.7% on the enormously high turnout of 84.59%. For the first, a far bigger support for national independence finally revealed itself.

THE SHADOW OF THE WIDER YES MOVEMENT

Despite the size of the Yes vote and the ever growing number of SNP members, the wider independence movement continues to defy organisation. The Greens although supporting independence have always been more concerned about environmental issues than national independence. The short lived Holyrood presence of the Scottish Socialist Party was established on the principles of acceptance of the personality cult of Tommy Sheridan and unconditional, undefined support for Scottish independence. When the leader left its only other pillar of support seemed irrelevant while the SNP held power.

Unwilling to create an independent distinct political identity from the SNP, the Greens and the SSP appear only to tail in the wake of the largest force. It was an ongoing joke in the various local Yes campaigns about the invisibility of either the SSP or Greens. Without any external challenge, powerful class forces within Scotland were able find an expression in the SNP while working class political aspirations only become wrapped up into their political hegemony. This is unlike Catalonia where different classes and traditions seeking independence can express themselves through different parties

The Independence Referendum of 2014 revealed a throbbing yearning for change. (As did the referendum on the European Union.) But the dominant Scottish National Party then and now want it to be as limited as possible. By reassuring the middle classes that much will remain the same after independence, it cannot explain why anyone should cease supporting the other parties of the status quo. This will not assist in mobilising the large numbers of people feeling disposed who previously voted Yes or for a future Yes Vote. The danger is that the Radical Independence Campaign appeared, until recently, to be uncritically following the SNP’s strategy and tactics. Indeed many in the RIC feel it wrong to criticise the SNP.

It is important to create a new “imagined community” for Scotland that abandons the middle-class based reassurances and again speaks to the disenfranchised and assist them to dream and organise for change. Although the SSP mentions a “modern, democratic republic” it plays no role in its political thinking, let alone a central one, in its political approach. Indeed an outside observer could conclude that its only distinctive policy is a ten pounds an hour national minimum wage.

For a radical Scotland to be built, breaking free of the existing international institutional constraints must occur. No domestic transformation is remotely possible unless these institutional blockages are removed. It is their intention to create illusions about their benevolent goals so as to conceal their real purposes.

The three major institutional impediments are:-

1. The Queen and Commonwealth;
2. The European Union; and,
3. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

REPUBLICANISM AND THE COMMONWEALTH

It is amazing how many on the radical left describe themselves as republicans yet do not make this the central feature of identification of their politics. Furthermore, they often hold membership of monarchist political parties (the SNP, Labour Party) seemingly unaware how central it is to their parties. The Queen’s intervention in the Independence Referendum still hasn’t registered with some of the middle classes. They fail to understand how the monarchy holds in place the doctrine of the Crown-in-Parliament, using Crown Powers based on the arbitrariness of custom and practice to keep the existing institutions and practices of UK government. To be a republican means to fight for the creation of a republic; not just affix it as an afterthought.

Politics is about government. In the UK, economic reductionism fixations with politics-from-below, as well as subconscious class deference has often helped take the focus away from the importance of the working class to shape and create the political institutions that comprise government. Nationalising various industries and providing extensive social welfare are useless if the monarchy, House of Lords and privileges of the archaic House of Commons remain intact and unchallenged. These are not simply quaint, outdated, decorative features but powerful mechanisms for the retention of class power. Together they make the keystone that holds the edifice together.

Most importantly, they prohibit many other essential features of national modernisation. It is impossible to have a written constitution because that would create an alternative basis of national, popular, legal sovereignty that would conflict with parliamentary sovereignty and the defensive, class privileged interpretations that stem from the dominant doctrine of the Crown-in-Parliament. Without a written constitution, it is impossible for individual, organisational or collective rights to exist. No UK subject has any constitutional or legal rights because any gains are cannot be secured anywhere but can be extinguished by the will of parliament or a judge pointing out that no entitlement exists beyond parliamentary sovereignty or custom and practice.

The privileged role of the Church of England with its seats in the House of Lords keeps religious worship obligatory in many non-church institutions, Parliament itself, the armed forces, but especially the schools system. Not only does this create a “league table” of religions, but a system of preferential funding for religiously based schools as well as reinforcing the divisions between private schools and the maintained sector. This further impedes the development of scientific education, especially biological evolution, and a fully rounded sex education covering contraception, abortion and homosexuality. The creation of a multi-cultured secular society that is genuinely inclusive of all religious views and opinions cannot be built while favour is given to one denomination of one religion.

The current Commonwealth grows from the British Empire even though it has enormously declined in influence and importance. Its Head is the UK monarch and a recent attempt has been made to effect a transition towards Prince Charles much to the annoyance of many former colonial members. Nevertheless, it is failing to be simply a mechanism for holding the former Empire together as countries with no prior connection such as Rwanda and Mozambique have obtained admittance. It is understandable that poor former colonies seek international sources to assist their development, but an independent Scotland could find membership would simply be to keep intact existing, entrenched class privileges, especially hereditary land ownership. Challenging the monarch or major aristocrats over the ownership, size or use of their estates would quickly escalate into an international issue.

Irish President Eamon De Valera was right when he thought it best to simply walk away from the British Commonwealth. Environmentalism, radical social reforms, secession, even left-wing socialist demands rarely disquiet the UK’s ruling classes. However, republican demands have struck terror into them because it more directly than any other doctrine challenges the way in which they govern and rule. It is a fundamental error to claim that it would be simple to establish a bourgeois republic and that nothing very much would change. The UK’s bourgeoisie has rarely needed to create mechanisms of rule because class deference to aristocratic rank has displaced judgements on their ability to govern. A more openly split bourgeoisie and its governing stratum makes it easier to contest them.

The creation of a Scottish republic has to become the central prism through which all future radical politics must be viewed. It is not enough to identify with republicanism while not making it the central purpose of politics. The republic is the egalitarian community we wish to create; the monarchy is the deference we accept in the UK’s hierarchical class structure. An independent Scotland –if one could be created- that does not remove the monarchy and its institutional and political obstacles would change so little that any national independence that could be attained would be reversed very quickly.

The international consequences of the Commonwealth are less direct because they are the outward projection of the UK’s ruling classes making them seem more “natural.” Nonetheless, the consequences of membership of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation seem more imposed although they are the outcome of voluntary decisions to join with outside forces taken by the UK’s rulers. Since the Second World War the state ie a body of armed men with a monopoly on violence has stopped being solely confined to the geographical parameters of the nation-state, but has been expressed through international treaties, pacts and alliances. These have massive consequences for the domestic policies of every country that signs up to them.

THE EUROPEAN UNION

The UK’s governing stratum thought it would win the referendum on continuing membership of the EU. Apart from some mavericks the bourgeoisie wanted to stay attached. Their calculation was wrong. Popular anger and disaffection with the leading political actors was expressed in the No vote. The officially sanctioned and funded campaigns did not speak for all, so their reasons should not be taken as reasons why people voted. In many ways the outcome was a misshapen class revolt. Although it did not express clear political aspirations, the result was a firm refusal to give assent to the status quo. It was hard to convince mining, steel and fishing communities that the EU protected workers’ rights. It was hard to tell EU migrants, that it protected their rights while the European Central Bank crashed their home economies. It was hard to tell non-EU migrants, especially from former colonies, why the EU now manned the wall to keep them out.

Membership of the EU is not a marginal issue but places enormous limitations on economic and social policies within all countries. The recent experiences of Greece Portugal Spain and Ireland show that. They have also included quotas on many industrial goods, limits on the amount of foodstuffs grown and fish caught, privatisation of postal services and other formerly publicly owned services, as well as severe restrictions on “state aid.”

Scotland voted differently because of the high prestige the SNP obtained from the Independence Referendum in 2014 and the massive demolition it made of its opponents in 2015. It was not a firm endorsement of the EU. A trust was given to the SNP it did not deserve. Unable to chart a course after the result of 2014, it became more and more reactive to the EU referendum and result; so much that it ceased arguing the case for national independence in Scotland. The headline in the … Nicola Sturgeon’s strategy was to remain in the EU on the basis of Mrs Thatcher’s opt-outs and Gordon Brown’s refusal to join the Euro. These advantages will not be open to an independent Scotland if it chooses to re-join the Union.

Nevertheless, the SNP’s illusion management has gone into overdrive to claim that an independent Scotland will not have to face the same austerity regimes on debt and public spending to get in that have been compulsory for every new entrant since 1999. As the UK leaves the EU, these issues will become clearer and wishful thinking will evaporate. The claim that the Sustainable Growth Commission has made recently about the need to stay with sterling for approximately ten years until a new Scottish currency can establish itself are misleading. It is a mistake to believe the Independence referendum was “lost” for economic reasons, let alone because of the confused policy on the currency. The myth that an independent currency needs a long gestation period is spread as a way of keeping nationalist discontents quiet. Rather the Wilson Report has signalled the future Scottish government’s attempt to negotiate privileged terms for re-entry into the EU and to condition the Scottish public to accept the Euro. .

No attempt was made to discuss the behaviour of the EU as a set of elite institutions that lack any accountability even to themselves but rather the focus was placed on a one-sided interpretation of workers’ rights, a proxy debate on immigration that failed to state how far the remain camp under Cameron had already attempted to restrict migrants’ rights. No truly radical Scotland could accept the conditions that the EU would place on Scottish sovereignty, industrial and economic policies, working people’s ambitions or ability to set policies for themselves. It was a vote that despite its many failings cleared the decks sufficiently for a future independent Scotland to attempt to make its own way in the world. Yet the EU Referendum was a UK-wide election, and its vote should be respected regardless of any geographical differences

Soon, the UK and Scotland will be formally outside the Union. This will not be easy even if all the arrangements are made and agreements are signed because “regulatory alignment” will still have to occur to trade within the EU’s borders. So far, only the Greens have declared their intention to campaign to re-join the EU. The SNP have been more circumspect; they are aware that re-entry may not be well received. Popular hostility to the EU is still palpable in Scotland; it has been masked by the SNP’s high prestige. Once outside, however, it may not be so easy to hide the real consequences of EU membership. Would those seeking to create a new Scotland really want to spend the next generation, perhaps two generations, campaigning to re-join this elite club?

THE NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANISATION

In May this year, Colombia became a “global partner” of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Although not yet a full member, it is joined in the same alliance as the country in the world that imprisons most journalists and trade unionists –Turkey. It is amazing how often NATO’s political representatives emphasise the reason for joining NATO is a commitment to shared values.

Immediately prior to the Independence referendum, the SNP pushed through a commitment to membership of NATO1. It prompted two Holyrood resignations, but was accepted by the membership as being of small consequence. However, it has been repeatedly pointed out that the commitment to removing nuclear weapons from Scotland’s territorial land and sea boundaries may become very difficult. It would be impossible for a NATO member to oppose the presence of nuclear weapons on the aircraft, ship or submarine of another NATO member. The high number of NATO exercises requiring Scottish anchorage will make this an immediate challenge. Unless contested from the outset, an erosion of the principle will commence very quickly.

NATO membership comes with ready-made foreign and military policies. These are usually set by the United States of America. It is very rare for any smaller country to diverge from them. Indeed none have for a prolonged period. At the moment, the US’ supranational sanctions regimes extend well beyond Russia and Iran affecting European banks and businesses trading with Cuba and Palestine. The Cuba, Venezuela, and Palestine Solidarity Campaigns in the UK have recently experienced enormous difficulties keeping bank accounts open. NATO membership makes it hard for smaller countries to break ranks to pursue an independent foreign policy; a constant pressure for compliance with the most powerful forces always exerts itself. The defence proposals outlined in the White Paper (Scotland’s Future) would be incompatible with NATO’s wishes because it promotes an almost entirely defensive posture over a highly flexible, mobile, integrated that can intervene in other countries.

CONFINING OR LIBERATING TO WIN NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE?

These international, institutional impediments will make it difficult to set up any policies that are capable of mobilising large numbers. Promoting illusions about how an independent Scotland could all be different while knowing that these external requirements will run counter to these popular wishes is a dishonest form of politics that will discredit anyone who practices it. Switching off reality to project illusions can only produce catastrophe. Unlike 2014, when there was a very low level of consciousness about the consequences of NATO and EU membership, there should be no reason now not to challenge these features.

Unfortunately, the false illusions that are now present in large parts of the left regarding the EU are an impediment to building a genuinely working class socialist republicanism. The seeming remoteness of NATO and Commonwealth membership does not permit them getting the prominence they deserve. Yet there is a wilful blindness to the easily observable effects of the EU’s strictures.

Issues which could mobilise many such as building a more representative inclusive politics cannot come into existence before overcoming these obstacles. A Sovereign Wealth Fund for defined areas of social spending would require firm, legally binding rules to be implemented by a Westminster (or Holyrood) that can brook no external challenge to its legal sovereignty. Likewise a written constitution that places limits on Westminster conduct.

At the moment, many think they can re-launch the Yes campaigns to fight for “independence” just like the last time. It will not happen like that. The ability to express the views people wished have been taken away by making these seemingly international commitments. More importantly, genuinely bold policies must be attached to people who display a will to win them. At present the SNP wants to become members of elite clubs. It was no accident that supposedly six thousand new members joined the SNP when they walked out of Parliament in a demonstrative act of defiance for a day. This is a lot more than felt energised by the online publication of the Sustainable Growth Commission report a fortnight earlier. A will not to accept the status quo was shown that brought respect. Only by showing an intention to challenge existing powers and authorities as well as a belief that breaks with the status quo can large numbers be mobilised again. But as the SNP grows its new “respectable” membership may become yet another obstacle to mobilising millions for national independence. That is why a radical independence movement that holds distinctive policies needs to be built.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/19/what-now-for-the-independence-movement/feed/0LEFT UNITY CONFERENCE, 20.6.18http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/18/left-unity-conference-20-6-18/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/18/left-unity-conference-20-6-18/#respondWed, 18 Jul 2018 18:38:42 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12535Emancipation & Liberation has been chronicling developments in the Left Unity Party in England and Wales. Steve Freeman reports on the LUP’s recent conference.

LEFT UNITY CONFERENCE, 20.6.18

Left Unity and the crisis of democracy

On 16 June Left Unity held its annual conference. The party has been steadily shrinking since 2016 but it still has over five hundred members. Over twenty five activists attended which tells its own story. It was a significant conference after last year’s nervous breakdown. The demand LU liquidates into the Labour Party was no longer evident in resolutions or speeches.

The main question before conference was the ‘crisis of democracy’ which grew from the politics of austerity. The EU referendum has taken this to a whole new level. It has divided England between the Anglo-British and Anglo-Europeans. An emergency resolution was tabled about the recent Anglo-British mass mobilisation in London by the supporters of Tommy Robinson, the BNP and UKIP etc.

The battle over Brexit is bringing us to the brink of a constitutional crisis in relations between the Crown, parliament and the peoples of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The shocking disaster at Grenfell Tower showed the ‘crisis of democracy’ at local as well as at national and European levels.

This fed into the main strand of the conference. What kind of party are we going to be? Was LU to carry on with its own brand of Trotskyism or recognise the centrality of the working class in the struggle for democracy and socialism? Should the Crown, parliament or people ratify the Tory Brexit deal? Should Unionism be able to impose Brexit on Northern Ireland and Scotland?

Trotskyist front

Left Unity was set up in 2013 as a Trotskyist front. All the leading activists were either in small organisations like the CPGB, Socialist Resistance and Workers Power or were refugees from the various organisations which litter the left landscape, such as the WRP, SWP and the Militant Tendency.

The rationale was that unlike the major Trotskyist parties – the SWP and the Socialist Party – the fragments were unable to engage in mass politics. They realised they could do better by hanging together than separately. So Left Unity made sense. When it came to a programme for this new front then it was left reformism or social monarchism that could bind them together.

In 1945 the Labour government carried through its programme of social monarchy – extensive ‘cradle to grave’ social reforms on the basis of loyalty to the constitutional monarchy as embodied in George VI. The ‘spirit of 45’ ran like a red line through LU inspired by Ken Loach’s call for unity. Left Unity was designed by Trotskyists to fill the gap which the Labour left was too weak and feeble to occupy.

In 2015 Jeremy Corbyn burst onto the scene and left reformism (i.e. social monarchism) took back the ‘sprit of 45’ and raised it to new heights previously unimaginable. LU’s small groups began decanting to the Labour Party. Why build a front when you could join a mass Labour Party and try to convert it into a much bigger Trotskyist front?

Left Unity began to shrink, disorientated by the unexpected turn of events. The first version of Left Unity as embodying the ‘spirit of 45’ was as dead as a dodo. None of the current leadership refers to it and some even pretend it never happened. So the question before this conference was the politics and character of Left Unity Mark 2 version.

Left Unity Mark 2 version

The main ideological dispute between socialists in Left Unity was between republicanism and Trotskyism. It was in effect a dispute as to whether the minimum programme of LU should be social republican or social monarchist. British Trotskyism had long become a voice for Labour’s social monarchism with its demands for social reforms – on health, housing, transport and public ownership.

The matter came to a head over the new LU constitution. A resolution from South London sought to amend the statement of party aims. It proposed to insert after “environmentalist” the French word “republican”.
If passed the aims of LU would now read “Left Unity is a party of the radical left, linked to the European Left Party, working in solidarity with like-minded anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist parties internationally. We are socialist, feminist, environmentalist, republican and opposed to all forms of discrimination”.

Some comrades from South London felt this was so innocuous that it was bound to go through. But they hadn’t reckoned with the fact that republicanism is like a red rag to the Trotskyist bull. Ex-SWP, ex-Militant, and ex WRP lined up to oppose republicanism. It wasn’t the crown they worried about but the threat this posed to their leadership.

The various Trotskyists declared they were totally and utterly republican. It was so obvious that there was no need to mention it. Every socialist felt the same and never mentioned it either. So too the Labour Party which never had a republican programme. Indeed avoiding republicanism was the litmus test of (pseudo)‘revolutionary’ and left reformist politics.

By the end of conference the Trotskyists secured their control of Left Unity with a new more centralist constitution. A great opportunity to rethink and discuss the strategy and programme was lost. This conference confirmed the decline of Left Unity. The ‘crisis of democracy’, which is growing in England, the UK and Europe, is showing itself in LU which is shrinking but more importantly has no answers.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/07/18/left-unity-conference-20-6-18/feed/0HOW WORKERS IN UKRAINE’S STEEL INDUSTRY ARE FIGHTING FOR WAGES, RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACYhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/22/how-workers-in-ukraines-steel-industry-are-fighting-for-wages-rights-and-democracy/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/22/how-workers-in-ukraines-steel-industry-are-fighting-for-wages-rights-and-democracy/#commentsFri, 22 Jun 2018 22:30:40 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12547This is an update on a major workers’ struggle in Ukraine, which this blog has been covering. This report first appeared at https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/2018/06/04/how-workers-in-ukraines-steel-industry-are-fighting-for-wages-rights-and-democracy/

HOW WORKERS IN UKRAINE’S STEEL INDUSTRY ARE FIGHTING FOR

WAGES, RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY

Striking steel workers in Krivyi Riy

A major struggle of workers at the global corporation ArcelorMittal plant in Kryvyi Rih in southern Ukraine has been underway. The company has only just secured a rotten Ukrainian court to rule against arbitration of the dispute in an effort to delay the joint unions campaign and strike action. We publish a article on the campaign by Maxim Kazakov Ukrainian socialist and activist of the Social Movement, which has been translated by Open Democracy Ukraine Solidarity Campaign calls on the labour movement to organise solidarity with this important struggle of Ukrainian trade unions.

The past year has seen a wave of mobilisation inside Kryvyi Rih’s mining and metal complex, particularly at the flagship foreign ArcelorMittal plant, one of the largest metal plants in the world. After weeks of negotiations, workers officially announced a labour dispute in late March. Then, on 14 May, railway workers in Kremenchuk started a work-to-rule action over conditions and pay, which was then taken up in soldidarity by railway workers at AMKR on 16 May. This solidarity action catalysed an existing dispute over pay at AMKR. AMKR plant management announced that it was shutting operations on 17 May.

This article, originally published in Ukrainian left-wing journal Commons, is the first attempt to analyse what is happening at AMKR in both the long-term and short-term perspective. With the author’s permission, we publish a translated and shortened version here.

Ukraine’s mining and metal industry was constructed largely in the era of fulfilled (and over-fulfilled) five-year plans. After Ukraine gained independence in 1991, these factories and mines played (and continue to play) no less a role than in the Soviet state. Today, every school student in Ukraine has to know about the shortcomings of the planned economy for their final exams. But after the transition to the market economy, these shortcomings became, if anything, more pronounced: throughout the 1990s, the share of ferrous metal production in Ukraine’s GDP grew thanks to loss of mechanical engineering and other branches of the country’s economy which produced goods with a high additional value.

By the early 2000s, steel exports had become one of the main sources of income for the state budget. Steelworkers could thus claim proudly that they were the ones responsible for bringing in the largest amounts of foreign currency, although the core of the 2000s boom also contained the factors that after 2008 would provoke crisis after crisis both in Ukraine’s economy and political sphere — the strong dependency on the global economy and concentration of profitable enterprises in only a few of the country’s regions. In recent years, the mining and metal complex has suffered, with the loss of mines and factories in Ukraine’s uncontrolled territories. At the same time, the proportion of complex production (cast iron, steel, prefabricated construction materials) within the production cycle has decreased while iron ore exports have risen.

These tendencies are hardly positive, but despite all its problems, metal production remains a central pillar of Ukraine’s economy. Even in the crisis year of 2015, it guaranteed nearly a sixth of industrial production, a quarter of goods exports and 1.5% of jobs. This last figure might not seem impressive at first glance, but metal workers are one of the best organised, conscious and active parts of Ukraine’s working class. The fact that so many jobs are concentrated at large plants, which gives a sense of a working collective; involvement in complex production processes, which raises the veil masking the “secrets” of the economy; the tradition of independent trade union movements, which began at the end of the 1980s — all of this creates a situation in which workers can act independently and achieve certain results. A situation that is far from typical for most other sectors of Ukraine’s economy.

The longest city’s largest factory
From this point of view, the metal workers and miners in the south-eastern city of Kryvyi Rih particularly stand out. We can assume that the size of the city plays to the Kryvyi Rih workers’ advantage. But it’s not the (famous) length of the city that’s important here. Kryvyi Rih, on the one hand, isn’t an regional centre, overflowing with state authorities and businessmen who suppress any manifestation of independent activity from the lower classes. On the other, in terms of size, the heart of the Kryvbas iron ore basin significantly outclasses your standard provincial monocity in Ukraine, where the factory management can discipline workers with ease. In other words, while in other east Ukrainian cities like Dnipro or Alchevsk (which is now under the control of the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic), the balance of power is such that independent trade unions are either absent or barely survive, in Kryvyi Rih workers fight off attacks and are even able to organise counter-attacks. This “economic geography” works to Kryvyi Rih workers’ advantage, although this is only a favourable condition that real people draw on in their everyday struggle.

Railway workers on strike at AMKR

For Kryvbas — and Ukraine in general — the post-Maidan years have been incredibly difficult. The war has broken production and trade networks, sending some workers to the front, and others – in search of work. In 2014, Ukraine’s national currency declined in value on three occasions, though price fluctuations on the external markets have been far more modest. This has created a “paradox” which is perfectly logical for capitalist relations: if prices for Ukrainian metals have already managed to rise again since the 2015 collapse, then real wages have remained lower than their pre-war level. In 2013, the average wage at the country’s biggest metallurgical plant ArcelorMittal-Kryvyi Rih (AMKR) was 5,808 hryvnia (€534), then in 2017 it was 10,278 hryvnia (€306).

The crisis and war have thus intensified a long-term tendency. While over 2010-2018, AMKR began bringing its owners three times more in pure profit, this same period saw the share of the wage fund drop from 11.3% to 5% of the cost of production. There have been constant cuts to staff numbers — from 65,000 workers in 2005 to 23,000 today. In reality, this “optimisation” has meant the greater exploitation of those who stayed working at the factory, reducing the amount the factory spends on its employees after outsourcing their jobs, the lack of state programmes to help people, forced out of their jobs by automation of the production process, re-train for other jobs. The situation has been similar at other factories and mines in Kryvbas.

2017: Kryvyi Rih rises up
Kryvyi Rih workers eventually responded to the actions of plant owners. In May 2017, coordinated protest actions began at the city’s main plants (Kryvyi Rih Iron Ore Plant, Evraz-Sukha Balka and AMKR) — employees stopped work, held public meetings and occupied administration offices. It was here that the demand for a monthly wage of 1,000 USD/Euros was first expressed publicly. In Ukraine today, this sounded like far too much, but until 2014 a range of specialist workers in Kryvyi Rih did in fact receive this wage. The plant owners constantly refer to average wages in Ukraine, yet workers, via contacts in international trade union organisations, know that even in Kazakhstan, where protests broke out among workers at the ArcelorMittal plant in Temirtau in December 2017, metal workers receive considerably more (€386 in 2017). In comparison with metal workers in developed countries, Ukrainians receive 20 times less — and this is one of the lowest wages across the global industry.

The scale and coordination of workers’ actions made the owners and managers receptive surprisingly quickly. The conflict stopped after an agreement was reached to gradually raise wages (on average by 50%).

Moloch demands a sacrifice
For the owners of Kryvyi Rih enterprises, however, this agreement did not mean recognising that the workers, or the economic rationality of their demands, were “right”, but merely marked a lost battle in an ongoing war. The owners postponed and rewrote the promised wage hikes in their favour and increased the pressure on independent union activists. At the same time, they began playing the role of the “good boss” who gives workers crumbs from his table, but doesn’t let irresponsible troublemakers “bite the hand that feeds” and bring down the enterprise with their unreasonable demands.

The plant, however, was falling apart by itself — literally. On the night of 3-4 March 2018, the roof collapsed at AMKR’s converter shop, killing a 25-year-old worker as a result. Indeed, while metallurgy remains a source of income for hundreds of thousands of workers, Ukraine’s state budget and big capital, this industry has terrible health problems: the level of aging of industrial equipment is between 70-80%. For workers in Kryvyi Rih, this statistic is a reality: outdated equipment leads to injuries, disabilities and even death.

The aftermath of a roof collapse at AMKR on 4.3.18 which killed one worker

The Ukrainian government hasn’t only distanced itself from this problem, but is acting in favour of capital, deregulating work safety procedures and reducing the powers of its own oversight agencies. Thus, in 2016, a State Labour Service commission found dozens of violations at AMKR, but in January 2018 a court rejected the demand to temporarily stop work at the plant (a stop costs Kryvyi Rih factories and mines close to $7.5m per day).

2018: the long road to the strike
Workers at AMKR have thus had to resort to more decisive measures. There are 10 unions operating at the plant, and the largest of them is the Union of Metalworkers and Miners of Ukraine (PMGU), which is part of the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine (FPU). PMGU can be considered a so-called “yellow” trade union— an official institution with its roots in the Soviet era, and which mostly avoids conflicts with owners and concentrates on distributing bonuses, sanatorium trips and gifts on public holidays to its members.

Alongside the PMGU, there are several other independent unions at AMKR. These are the successors of the perestroika-era workers movements of the late 1980s and 1990s, when workers broke out from under Communist Party control and encountered the realities of capitalism. Independent unions have less in terms of physical assets than their counterparts in the FPU, but are prepared for more decisive actions in labour disputes, even real confrontation with management over wages and safety. Many of them are members of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine (KVPU). There’s also militant unions at AMKR which can count thousands of workers among their members. These are branches of national unions (Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine — the largest union at the factory, and the organisation behind the protests — and others) and regional unions, as well as employee associations operating inside AMKR. And there’s another “professional” organisation allegedly operating at AMKR, which I will come to in a moment.

In the struggle with the workers, all means are acceptable, in particular anti-Semitism. The materials distributed by AMKR management are a pseudo-trade union newspaper and Alexander Vilkul, Kryvyi Rih parliamentary deputy and co-chairman of Opposition Bloc, call on workers to attend a pseudo-meeting with Serhiy Kaplin (social democrat) at the same time as the conference of the labor collective. .

The situation at AMKR — accidents that end in fatalities, the management’s sabotage of the 2017 wage agreement and dismissive attitude to worker activists — has convinced both the independent unions and even PMGU of the need for decisive action. On 14 March this year, they held a public rally outside the factory management’s office, where they raised the following demands to the owner and general director: raise the average wage to €1,000, create safe working conditions, stop job cuts and outsourcing, and stop pressuring labour organisations. Over several days, 12,000 employees signed this petition — nearly half of the factory’s personnel.

But mass protest isn’t only an expression of material discontent, but an opportunity to build political capital — and which instantly attracts specialists of this craft. Serhiy Kaplin, Ukraine’s head “social democrat” and only “left-wing” parliamentary deputy, quickly travelled to Kryvyi Rih for the 14 March meeting. Kaplin’s speech was typical of the current dominant political culture: calls to concentrate on struggling lawfully for European working conditions and lifestyle were heard alongside xenophobic attacks against the “Indian exploiters” (a reference to ArcelorMittal CEO Lakshmi Mittal).

For most of the workers present, this nationalism exported from Kyiv was something alien. But the factory management took advantage of this, accusing the trade unionists of playing politics, selling out and xenophobia. Preparations for an employee conference (necessary in order to launch a labour dispute) were held against a background of dirty PR tactics typical of local political campaigns. The AMKR administration even held an “identical” conference at the same time, spreading provocative and defamatory leaflets and newspapers, as well as pressuring workers.

An employee conference at AMKR, 27.3.18

Despite these barriers, the employee conference was held on 27 March, and 300 delegates from all the factory’s shops voted for the demands made at the rally. In their official response, the administration completely ignored the unions’ claims against them, and thus the employees’ authorised representatives voted to start a labour dispute. According to Ukrainian legislation, this means that employees and employer should try to come to an understanding via a reconciliation commission and with the assistance of the National Service of Mediation and Reconciliation — and if where reconciliation is not achieved, then there is the opportunity to start a legal strike.

Black metal and “black” accounts
AMKR workers are well prepared in the nuts and bolts of workplace conflict. For them, it’s essential: at the centre of it there’s the question of wages and their relationship to enterprise income. Even according to official figures, the amount of money that workers have been receiving has dropped year on year.
Anyone interested in Ukraine’s economy is well aware that, alongside its dependence on raw materials and aging infrastructure, there is also the key problem of offshore schemes. It’s hard to imagine the scale of what has happened over the past few years. Three quarters of domestic metal exports are processed via foreign middlemen, and this almost always leads to hiding profits offshore in order to reduce the amount of tax paid in Ukraine (transfer pricing).

After the official start of the labour dispute, the conflict has moved into the stage of drawn-out negotiations, tactical manoeuvres and mobilisation of resources

In the past, workers at AMKR have only mentioned this as a general problem — like any ordinary Ukrainian citizen who rails against “the oligarchs stealing our country” in their kitchen. But thanks to the efforts of left-wing economists Oleksandr Antonyuk and Zakhar Popovych, they can now know the details of these grand schemes. AMKR exports its production to dozens of countries around the world, particularly to Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, China and Lebanon. Trading companies registered in offshore countries act as the middlemen, and they are also part of the transnational corporation ArcelorMittal. Thus, one company belonging to the corporation sells its production via other companies of the same corporation, which are registered outside Ukraine.

Let’s take a concrete case: on 26 September 2017, a consignment of reinforcement steel (one of AMKR’s main export products) was sent to Lebanon through the southern Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv at the price of $324 per tonne (all information from ImportGenius). The market price for this product is $510 per tonne. The formal client for this was ArсelorMittal International FZE, which is registered in United Arab Emirates. The difference between the sale price to the trading company and real buyer ($186) goes to the head office of ArcelorMittal in Luxembourg, and is not taxed in Ukraine. AMKR produces 5.4m tonnes of this steel per year, and most of it is exported.

Approximately 50% of AMKR’s production is sold via these schemes, and at least $150 is made on each tonne — this means that nearly $400m is evading both Ukrainian taxes and workers. The current wage fund at AMKR is $85m. And in this light, local workers’ fight at this factory becomes a struggle of national importance — one about channeling incomes to the country’s budget.

A healthy person’s 1st May
After the official start of the labour dispute, the conflict has moved into the stage of drawn-out negotiations, tactical manoeuvres and mobilisation of resources. A public action on 1 May was important in maintaining people’s fighting spirit, overseeing the collective and bringing in new allies, and was organised by the independent unions. Indeed, the march in Kryvyi Rih was the most important 1st May action in Ukraine this year (the actions in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Dnipro were organised by political parties financed by big capital, and therefore don’t count).

More than 300 factory workers attended the 1st May in the city — the majority of them, although they emphatically supported the start of collective bargaining in March, celebrated a four-day weekend in Soviet style at their allotments and dachas. Their speeches and comments to the media may have lacked the punch of PR professionals, but they demonstrated a clear level of class consciousness. And this is worth noting when Ukrainian society is experiencing extended atomisation, state propaganda aimed at diffusing class identity, celebrating neoliberalism and nationalism, and the fact that left-wing intellectual websites, books and journals are operating on a small scale. Here are some quotes from the rally:

“In any case, they [workers who migrate] remain second-class people abroad. We need to fight for a just wage here.”

“Trade unions aren’t about trips to sanatoriums, but defending people and human rights.”

“If the oligarchs don’t offer a compromise after the strike, then we have another option — revolution”

“He [AMKR General Director] says that we aren’t Europeans, that we’re uncivilised. And uncivilised people don’t get big wages, you can pay them enough for soup and that’s it.”

There were many conversations about the latest accident at the plant, which happened two days before, on 29 April. Having completed repairs to one of the blast furnaces, workers tested it, but it spilled 40 tonnes of molten iron in the process. Thankfully, no one was injured, and shop workers dealt with the consequences.

Meanwhile, two dozen members of left-wing organisations Social Movement and Direct Action, as well as anarchist organisations joined the May Day events. In their speeches, these left-wing activists drew attention to AMKR’s involvement in offshore schemes and international solidarity for organised labour, which helps achieve results in concrete conflicts.

The local branch of the Socialist Party of Ukraine, which is friendly with PMGU, marched separately under their own banners, although May Day was supposed to be held without any party symbols. This column spoke out in favour of Serhiy Kaplin. In my opinion, SPU members are wrong to put their hopes for the renewal of their party in Kaplin. He is a businessman who represents the interests of workers in parliament (via FPU) and yet at the same time sabotages the fight against the proposed new Labour Code, which is anti-worker. Kaplin is also linked to oligarch Dmytro Firtash, having originally been part of a political party financed by him, and now regularly appearing on Firtash’s TV channel and organising protests in support of his factories. In a word, Kaplin is hardly the best candidate in a “left-wing” party or the fight against economic injustice.

The far right also took part in the International Day of Workers’ Solidarity — they traditionally appeal to workers movements in their search for new electorate and members. The Ukrainian far-right political party Svoboda (“Freedom”) has its own trade union, Freedom of Work — and several members of its AMKR branch were present, as well as Yuri Noyevyi, a far-right Kyiv city deputy known for organising attacks on the feminist movement and LGBT activists in the capital.

May Day demonstration

Another Svoboda member’s speech underlined the far-right’s vision of proletarian struggle: it should be waged in support of a “Ukrainian worker’s state” led by the “best” — i.e. Svoboda members and their totalitarian integral nationalism.

The anti-democratic spirit of this party can be seen in their trade union, which, according to its charter, is led by a “Head of the Union, a single-person elected position of the union”. Taking into account this union’s small membership, the election for this position turns into the worst Soviet ritual of voting for one candidate. The Svoboda members did not take part in the 14 March rally and called on people not to attend the 27 March conference, yet now claim on television that they are the leaders of the strike. Worker activists — who are involved in the real struggle against the factory’s owners and management — believe that Svoboda members are trying to build reputations via someone else’s struggle, creating an image of themselves as a socially-oriented party. They’re also useful for the AMKR administration, playing the role of “controlled radicals”.

A marathon with hurdles
After 1 May, AMKR management and trade unionists managed to square off for another few rounds. While in April, the factory administration tried to prolong the reconciliation commission in any way possible, since the beginning of May it seems to have agreed to join the negotiation table. Their policy, however, hasn’t changed — they’re still applying administrative pressure, legal manipulations, buying some people off and frightening others. Management has now raised workers’ wages by 12%, inferring that a bird in the hand is better than an exhausting struggle against a team of professional lawyers and managers with connections in the state apparatus. On 3 May, a meeting to agree who would be represented on the reconciliation commission turned into a 25-hour marathon. Here, management played for time, the police blocked union representatives from leaving the room, and workers held a spontaneous protest and nearly occupied the factory administration building. In the end, the necessary documents were signed and the reconciliation commission was confirmed by both sides.

On 10 May, the reconciliation commission finally held its first meeting; secretaries were appointed, and procedures were confirmed. It seemed that it would now be possible to begin examining employee demands. But alas the next day it turned out that the administration has filed a court case the previous week, demanding that the 27 March conference be declared illegitimate. The owner will try and stop the reconciliation commission while the case is heard in court. These kind of manoeuvres can last for a very long time.

An April 2018 letter from Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU) demanding that mine managers in the Donetsk region keep the SBU informed of independent trade union activity and “destabilising elements” .At this point, the state decided to get involved — after all, it is led by big capital and is concerned with its problems.

The city’s State Security Service department (SBU) took an interest in the activities of the independent trade unions. And this is a manifestation of a direct policy: in Donetsk region, the SBU recently requested that mining companies report on the activity of independent unions as potential “destabilising elements”. Perhaps they consider dividing the interests of labour from the interests of capital “separatism”.

The Kryvyi Rih unions’ appeal to state institutions is completely understandable and symptomatic — your average Ukrainian is far more law-abiding than those who write or enforce the laws for them.

Unfortunately, Ukraine’s current political elite comes from those social circles which actively practice the art of “optimising” and “minimising”.

Our locomotive is hurtling forward
But there’s more to life than highly paid lawyers and corrupt public officials in their sterilised offices. Help for the AMKR workers came — naturally — from other workers.

On 14 May, independent trade unions on Ukraine’s railways started a work-to-rule action, demanding higher wages, the return of cancelled privileges and new locomotives. AMKR’s railway shop also joined the “Italian strike” as it’s called, driving their trains into the repair yards and stopping the transfer of ore to the furnaces. The factory’s general director contacted the police with a list of “crimes” committed by AMKR employees, before starting a rumour that the factory would close, and that Ihor Kolomoisky and Rinat Akhmetov (Ukrainian oligarchs who own part of the Kryvyi Rih complex) are involved in the conflict. Independent trade unionists responded: it is factory management who are responsible for the situation, and there is no strike — employees are simply refusing to work in injust and unsafe conditions.

Serhiy Moskalets, Free Union of Railway Workers of Ukraine

On 18 May, the AMKR administration made their move, deploying strikebreakers with the help of the state. Locomotives from Ukrainian Railways began working again at the factory; militarised security was brought onto the site. When millions of dollars are under threat, workers find themselves looking down the barrel of a gun. Kryvyi Rih residents are trying to remind these people — who are serving the interests of others — about the unity of class interest.

The situation at the factory and around it is now so tense that ArcelorMittal’s owner, Lakshmi Mittal, was supposed to visit on 25 May. Meanwhile, AMKR General Director Parajmit Kalon has offered employees an increase to the factory’s wage fund in November — to the tune of 1.1 billion hryvnya. This figure sounds astronomical, but in practice this will mean a raise to average wages of €130 per month. And the rhetoric found in Kalon’s official communication is striking in terms of its lies and manipulation, camouflaged in evenhandedness and corporate language. The rise in wages, so the official communication goes, will place the factory in a difficult position; employees are “ruining the investment attractiveness of Ukraine” (An economic counter-revolution! Where is the SBU?); people should be thinking about introducing new technologies, not higher wages. But who has prevented ArcelorMittal over the past 13 years to stop using the last Martin furnaces in Ukraine, aside from the Alchevsk metal factory? Of course, the director did not mention offshore schemes at all.
If the trade union movement can bring the plant’s finances out into the open, then they will have to have a say in how those funds are used

Instead, the top manager pressured employees by referring to figures with an innumerable amount of zeros and hints of an apocalypse, but you can sense his own despair when he reads out the words “when our blast furnaces will be full again” in his video address to workers.

What are we fighting for?
Today, Kryvyi Rih workers are involved in a struggle that could have far-reaching consequences for the whole of Ukraine. The protesters’ main demand is raising wages, but this issue isn’t limited to paying for medical insurance policies, new washing machines and holidays abroad. Higher wages are a necessary condition for developing real forms of democracy in Ukraine. Workers with good wages can spend more time and resources on participating in political life, gain better access to information and (self-)education — and thus the right skills for making decisions. Events in Kryvyi Rih prove that workers can break through the smokescreen of bourgeois manipulation to the real nature of things, and propose well thought-out (in comparison with the factory owners and officials) policies. The main task of left-wing intellectuals remains explaining the nuances of political economy to workers and putting their struggle in the broader context. It’s nothing new, but this is the classic first step that needs to be taken as part of a long path towards progressive change.

Workers at large heavy industrial plants are a minority in the working class, but in this sector of the economy there are still the conditions that make self-organisation and struggle possible. This is why metal workers and miners, as they achieve results in their conflict with management, present an example of collective action and inspire workers in other sectors where the instincts of self-organisation aren’t so well developed. This could produce a domino effect. The realisation that group interests are the basis of genuine pluralism and directing class struggle into a constructive direction. Thus, real social groups and collectives can come to replace the all-encompassing constructions of “Ukrainian patriot”, “Soviet person” and “homo economicus”. These social groups can define their own course of action in free discussion and through forms of grassroots democracy. This is what Kryvyi Rih workers are doing now. Independent trade unionists are convinced: decentralised structures contain the strength of protest. The AMKR management simply doesn’t know who the unions’ main decision-maker is (this person simply doesn’t exist), and therefore who to pressure first.

By raising the issue of transfer pricing, the workers of Kryvyi Rih are presenting the vices of the ruling order and the defects of the current course of economic development to the court of public opinion. This will, however, present them with new problems. If the trade union movement can bring the plant’s finances out into the open, then they will have to have a say in how those funds are used. After all, democratisation without modernisation always slips into a scramble for limited resources, one that is harmful for society as a whole. The infrastructure in Ukraine’s mining and metal complex needs to be renewed, and the priority needs to be given to producing complex goods. The taxes on profits that a renewed heavy metallurgical industry could bring to the Ukrainian state could be used to develop new hi-tec enterprises and social welfare (healthcare, accomodation and education). State power and big capital have clearly not done this and will not do so, even imitating the fight against offshore schemes.

This returns us to the question of workers’ control over production, the real participation of the working class in discussing and voting on political decisions at the national level (impossible without creating modern workers’ political parties), as well as developing international cooperation of organised labour — the only symmetrical response to the power of transnational corporations. If in the last century, the movement in this direction led to unexpected and sometimes opposite results, this does not mean that we have to refute those ideas. Today, history is made in struggle.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/22/how-workers-in-ukraines-steel-industry-are-fighting-for-wages-rights-and-democracy/feed/1ALLAN ARMSTRONG REVIEWS ‘THE RED AND THE GREEN’ BY GERARD CAIRNShttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/22/allan-armstrong-reviews-the-red-and-the-green-by-gerard-cairns/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/22/allan-armstrong-reviews-the-red-and-the-green-by-gerard-cairns/#commentsFri, 22 Jun 2018 12:13:18 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12536Review of The Red and the Green – Portrait of John Maclean by Gerard Cairns

Gerard Cairns has recently published his informative and challenging new book, The Red and the Green – A Portrait of John Maclean. I have known Gerry since the early 1990s and I would find it hard to call him Gerard, so I will use Gerry for the rest of this review.

The book’s title reveals the two main aspects of Gerry’s assessment of John Maclean. The Red and the Green highlights Gerry’s research into ‘Red’ John and his relationship with the ‘Green’ or Irish community on Clydeside .[1] A Portrait of John Maclean examines Maclean the political activist and family man. It raises questions about how Socialists organise and relate to others, especially their partners and families. When assessing Maclean, Gerry brings his own personal experience to bear. “This has been a very personal portrait of a man I have researched, studied, lectured on, debated for a long time.” [2] Thus Gerry’s book is viewed through the prism of his own life of political activism.

a) Another personal approach to John Maclean and the issue of Scottish self-determination

Therefore, in writing this review and entering the spirit of Gerry’s “very personal portrait”, I think it is necessary first to outline my own history of political activity. Such an approach, although not needed in assessing Gerry’s new historical research in The Red and the Green, can help us understand how political activists relate to and interpret history. Today we face a political situation, where the issues of Irish and Scottish self-determination are once more linked to the very future of the UK state and British imperialism. Thus outlining my own experience provides just one example of the various political paths followed by socialists who have come to understand the need to complete the thwarted democratic revolution, which was mobilised around IndyRef1. Although Gerry does not openly state it, this also seems to be a key motivation behind the publication of his book.

Despite the dangers of stereotyping, I think labelling is helpful. I would describe myself as a communist, republican, Scottish internationalist, freethinker and secularist. It took a number of years before I adopted all of these views. I don’t characterise myself as a Marxist or Marxian (as Maclean would describe himself). I think that such personalised ‘isms’ represent a continuation of theological thinking, as reflected in for example Lutheranism or Calvinism. It was not for nothing that Karl Kautsky became known as the ‘Pope of Marxism’. Furthermore, many official and dissident Marxist Communists have elevated their leaders, e.g. Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Mao, to saintly status. Their writings have become ‘holy texts’.

Both Gerry’s and my own active political lives precede our initial meeting – for another quarter of a century in my case. I took up Socialist politics in 1968. I was very much a ‘child of 68’, imbued with its strong Socialist internationalism. I was an enthusiastic participant in the cultural ferment of the times. It was also the start of a new period when the issue of greater Scottish self-determination was being raised. [3] At the publicly visible level, this was marked by Winnie Ewing’s spectacular by-election victory for the SNP in Motherwell in the previous year. However, there were deeper political and cultural roots to this new interest in the Scottish Question.

From 1967-1972 I attended at Aberdeen University and Teacher Training College. I was particularly enthused by the teach-in on Scottish history and culture organised by Ray Burnett. [4] Amongst several other works I read Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song and Hugh MacDiarmid’s, A Drunk Man Looks at a Thistle. Later, the ground breaking 7:84 theatre company’s The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil became another inspiration. I found out whatever I could about John Maclean and James Connolly.

I also tried to learn Gaelic.[5] Why was somebody who was an unwitting Left unionist at the time, born in English-speaking Edinburgh, with a Geordie father, considering learning Gaelic in the first place? I had early on rejected the idea that the world would be better place if the number of languages were reduced. I upheld what could be considered a social version of the need for bio-diversity, as it later became known. I was also a hill walker who regularly visited the Highlands and Islands. Before this, I had walked in the Borders and I loved the local highly descriptive words used to name the physical features there. However, I felt there was a barrier between myself and the physical and human features of the Highlands and Islands. The human landscape with its crofting communities highlighted the survival of a different form of society. Both these physical and human features had Gaelic names, which I could not understand, yet was fascinated by.

In this period, the CPGB in Scotland was the first organisation on the Left to devote serious attention to Scottish history and culture. They published the Scottish Marxist, which I read avidly. An increasing range of new writing took Scotland seriously and unearthed new historical and cultural material. [6] The Red Book on Scotland, edited by Gordon Brown (remember him!) had a wide range of contributors. It also made a considerable impact, signalling the new forces pushing for political devolution in Scotland.

Many Socialist writers and performers were very proud of the Scottish Left’s contribution to progressive politics in the UK and the wider world. In this, usually without realising it, they were part of the Radical, later Left unionist tradition, that emerged in the early nineteenth century. The Victorian, Radical Liberal notion of Britain as the beacon of progress in the world was to be transformed by the Left into the ‘British road to socialism’. In 1972, the UCS Work-In was making its impact felt and for some it was claimed as the revival of the Red Clydeside of John Maclean’s time, which placed it at the forefront of the British Labour and Socialist movement. In Glasgow, the Communist Party ran the Star Club, where Scottish folk songs were performed, along with those from Ireland, England and the USA. I never got to visit this club, but was a regular attender at the Waverley Bar in Edinburgh, where, a great range of folk songs, traditional and modern, was also being performed.[7] This could be considered a precursor in the cultural realm of the politics that I later termed ‘internationalism from below’

After I returned to Edinburgh in 1972, [8] I joined the International Socialists, which later became the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). By 1974, the main public face of the SNP in my city was their only city councillor, the right wing, super-royalist, Norman Irons. He represented middle class Corstorphine, in what Billy Connolly called Edinburgh’s “spam and nae knickers” belt! [9] I was also was aware that Hamish Watt, the new SNP MP for Banffshire, had been an ex-Conservative (whose politics, apart from the change from union jack to saltire, did not seem to change that much); and that Douglas Henderson, another new SNP MP in East Aberdeenshire, had been a member of the South African Nationalist Party. [10] This contributed to my own disconnect between a strong interest in Scottish historical and cultural affairs and a politics sympathetic to Scottish independence. In 1976, in the run-up to the discussions that were taking place about Scottish devolution, I wrote the SWP’s last-ditch defence of the constitutional status quo, Nationalism or Socialism – The SNP and SLP [11] exposed. [12]

However, the continued decline of British imperialism and the growing economic crisis faced by British capitalism in the late 1970s, led to sections of big and small business giving their support to a reactionary unionist political clampdown, and their opposition to any liberal constitutional reform (does this sound familiar!) Thatcher was in the ascendancy amongst the Tories. Her connections with the military and security forces were important to her rise. I began to question the SWP’s political slogan, ‘Revolution Not Devolution’. Along with Steve Freeman in London and others, I became a member of the Republican Faction (RF) (a dangerous thing to do in the SWP! [13]). In the 1979 Devolution referendum, the SWP played its own small part (along with Labour conservative unionists and some small Socialist sects) and Devolution was defeated. But instead of Revolution we got Thatcher! [14]

I remained a dissident member of the SWP until 1982, when Tony Cliff’s ‘Downturn Theory’, the organisation’s inadequate response to the Irish Hunger Strikers, and its lack of anything to say about the situation in Scotland, led to my resignation. Brian Higgins, a blacklisted Glasgow building worker, living in Northampton, Steve Freeman, myself, and others formed the Revolutionary Democratic Group (RDG). However, I still remained a Left Scottish-British unionist without realising it. The RF and RDG had adopted the idea of a Federal Republic of England, Scotland and Wales. It wasn’t until the Anti-Poll Tax Campaign, during which I became the chair of the Edinburgh and Lothians Anti-Poll Tax Union, that I could see that working class unity, far from being facilitated by the existence of a British state, was obstructed by it. The Scottish Anti-Poll Tax Federation (APTF) practised what was, in effect, ‘internationalism from below’. We took the campaign into England and Wales. [15] The campaign defied both the Tory and Labour parties, which were administering the hated tax. Furthermore, by 1990 the Anti-Poll Tax Campaign had won a significant victory, one of the very few following Thatcher’s defeat of the miners in 1985.

It was in this context that I began to look anew at John Maclean. I had already read the biographies by John Broom and Nan Milton. I had also read No Mean Fighter, the biography of Harry MacShane, in which he wrote of his days with Maclean in the Tramps Trust Unlimited. I began to appreciate the significance of Connolly and Maclean’s socialist republican ‘break of the UK and British Empire’ strategy. I joined the John Maclean Society. This is where I met Gerry. Before long I was debating, alongside Gerry, against Alan McCombes and Tommy Sheridan, then Left British unionists, prominent in Scottish Militant Labour (SML). [16]

Gerry, a member of the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement (SRSM), also became involved in the Scottish Republican Forum (SRF), which included the small Republican Workers Tendency (RWT) of which I was a member .[17] The SRF represented an attempt to get Socialists in Scotland (and elsewhere) to appreciate the significance of the Scottish (and Irish) Question. As well as conducting educational work, participating in historical commemorations, and holding socials, the SRF published two pamphlets. These presented the debates over the political differences between the SRSM and the RWT. One was entitled Jacobites and Covenanters – Which Tradition? The other was entitled White Settlers or Jockbrits – Who is to Blame? Gerry’s non-sectarian approach to such debates increased the respect I already had for him.

I was one of the early members of the Scottish Socialist Alliance, which had been set up by SML, in the process of abandoning their Left British unionism – in Scotland at least! The SRSM, always very wary of the Brit Left, took longer to join. Eventually the SRSM and the Republican Communist Network (RCN) (which the RWT became part of in Scotland), constituted two platforms in what became the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). The Left in Scotland was now seriously addressing the Scottish Question. Many from an earlier Left British unionist background were now eager to learn more about the history of Scotland. So I returned to the historical debate over the Jacobites and Covenanters in Beyond Broadsword and Bayonets.[18] Gerry responded in his non-sectarian way, with Caught Between the Covenant and the Clans. And then came Tommygate! This led to the SRSM and RCN being in the two opposing camps, although I believe that Gerry found it difficult to support Sheridan, and turned his back on both feuding groups.

In the process of writing this review, Gerry and myself were brought together again to give two different talks at The Life and Times of James Connolly event, organised by the 1916 Rising Centenary Committee – Scotland on 16th June in the STUC buildings in Glasgow. Gerry’s presentation, based on his book, was a bravura performance. It was great to hear the results of Gerry’s years of research, focussing on the life of John Maclean. Gerry’s book is open about his political influences, naming Donald Anderson and Jim Clayson of the SRSM, and the late Jim Young, Scottish Socialist and historian at Stirling University. However, there is no attempt to impose a ‘party line’ in Gerry’s book. He more often raises questions. This is one of the strengths of his book.

b) The politics of the personal

One of the key issues Gerry addresses are the stresses and strains that flow from a life of political activism. John Maclean, of course, provides a key example. In particular, Gerry looks at Maclean’s relationship with his wife, Agnes (nee Wood) and their two daughters, Jean and Nan. Agnes first met John at a Social Democratic Federation (SDF) meeting in her home town of Hawick. But once they married, “Mrs Agnes Maclean would subsume her own socialist politics into the duty, as it was perceived then, of being Mother and raising the girls. This was the inherent chauvinism in politics and political activism.” [19] Gerry returns to this, covering the periods of Maclean’s jail sentences. Following these, he threw himself back into more political activism in the frenetic days of the 1916-21/3 International Revolutionary Wave. “Agnes left him in the autumn of 1919. She probably couldn’t take any more of the ‘all for the cause line.'” [20] In late 1922, “there was some form of personal reconciliation going on between himself and Agnes.” [21] But this depended on Maclean being able to get a teaching job once more. However, Maclean was clearly blacklisted, and after failing to find employment, he returned full-time to the struggle. This meant that he remained physically separated from Agnes and his two daughters, although he clearly still loved them in his own (inadequate) way, as shown in his letters to Agnes and to Jean and Nan .[22].

There is an obvious comparison to be made with James Connolly, [23] who took his wife Lillie and family through equally hard days, in Scotland. Ireland and the USA. These times included the death of his young daughter, Mona in a fire in Dublin, whilst he was away in the US. Over the many difficult years James and Lillie shared, they did not separate. But we have never heard Lillie’s response to her husband’s comment to her in his death cell in 1916 – “Hasn’t it been a full life. And isn’t this a good end.” [24]

Gerry makes the good point that “politics was {Maclean’s} addiction. It was more than passion and carried a destructive element as all addictions do, wrecking his life at every level. As the political morphine streamed through his blood he either couldn’t see the price his family were paying or, if he did, he could not do anything about it.” Gerry then sounds a striking and contemporary note – “Not without a political re-hab programme! ” [25] It has taken the more recent autonomous organisation of women to address the issue of how we best practice politics and develop relations with others. As I was re-reading Gerry’s book for this review, bella caledonia posted an interview with the socialist feminist, Silvia Federici. [26] I think Silvia’s article could form part of Gerry’s suggested political re-hab programme for activists today.

c) John Maclean, religion and secularism

When addressing another aspect of Maclean’s politics, his relationship to religion, Gerry uses his own Catholic background in making an assessment. As long as I have known Gerry, he has worn his Catholicism very lightly in political circles. As well as being politically non-sectarian, Gerry provides a very good example of the non-sectarian approach to religion that the best Socialists have tried to encourage in Scotland. In contrast to Gerry, John Maclean came from a Free Church of Scotland background. There has been no love lost between these two varieties of Christianity – to put it mildly! Gerry, though, is able to see across that religious divide and appreciate a certain commonality in their ethical approaches.

Gerry addresses the neglected religious background to Maclean’s life and politics. He emphasises the long-term impact of Maclean’s upbringing and training in the Free Church of Scotland. I think Gerry is right in saying that this legacy never left him. Maclean considered Jesus to be one of his heroes (the others were Socrates and John Ball [27]). In effect, Gerry is arguing that it was the ethical moralism, which Maclean had found in the Free Church, that was transformed in his own conversion to the Marxian tradition. [28] Maclean wrote articles covering three successive Free Church general assemblies. [29] He continued to criticise the Free Church, highlighting its inability to live up to its promises. [30] This he claimed led to hypocrisy amongst its spokesmen – and they were always men! I think Maclean believed that some still practicing Christians might still be won over to Socialism, just as he had been.

One problem that Maclean and other Socialists faced was that the Socialist sects, they worked with, had not understood Marx’s own critique of religion. They could relate to Marx’s famous depiction of “religion as the opium of the people”. But from there, many Socialists in the UK and USA tended to fall into the radical Atheist tradition, which condemned religion as the source of all evils. They did not look to Marx’s further development of his views on religion. “Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation.” [31]

However, Gerry goes further, suggesting that Maclean was a “convinced agnostic”. [32] This seems a bit of an oxymoron to me! Perhaps the main textual source for Gerry’s claim is Maclean’s reply to “saturated {i.e. hypocritical} Christians.” “I do not blame Christ remember, as he was neither Socialist nor Anti-Socialist. It is quite possible for… Christians to harden their hearts against us, not because our principles are false or capitalism moral, but solely because we are called atheists.” [33] There is a double implication here. First, because Christ was neither Socialist nor Anti-Socialist, perhaps he was agnostic over the issue! More seriously, Maclean’s use of “we are called”, rather than “we are atheists” suggests to Gerry that Maclean could be called an agnostic. But Gerry does not leave it there. He returns to this theme towards the end of Maclean’s life. He points to the participation of the Reverend Richard Lee in Maclean’s funeral. [34] Gerry does not over-egg this, pointing to the secular nature of the service and Lee’s involvement in Socialist politics. [35].

My own view on this is that when Maclean called himself a Marxian, he upheld what he understood to be Marx’s view on religion. Gerry is right though to point out that the only aspect of Marx’s thinking that Maclean was really familiar with was his economics. I think Maclean could be best described as being, as well as a Marxist/Marxian, a consistent secularist. He believed in the separation of Church and State. He saw the need for a united Socialist organisation of Freethinkers, Atheists, Agnostics, Christians of all denominations and Jews. Gerry mentions Maclean’s support for the Catalan Anarchist, Francesc Ferrer, [36] who was murdered in 1909 by the Spanish state at the behest of the Catholic Church. He refers to Maclean’s attacks on Dalzeil School Board for dismissing a teacher, Mrs Marshall, who had converted to Roman Catholicism. [37] Maclean addressed meetings of the Catholic Socialist Society in Glasgow organised by John Wheatley. [38] Gerry also highlights Maclean’s own support for secular education in his article in the SDF’s Justice in 1908. [39] All this is consistent with a non-sectarian and secularist approach to politics.

I think Gerry’s comparison with James Connolly is instructive. Gerry argues that although Connolly wrote many “musings on the intertwining of Catholicism and Socialism and national identity, John Maclean seemed a lot more comfortable.” [40] Nevertheless, I think that Socialists can learn a lot from Connolly’s pamphlet, Labour, Nationality and Religion. [41] I also think that Connolly was able to get right to the roots of the roles of Protestantism and Catholicism in Ireland in his Catholicism, Protestantism & Politics, [42] whereas Maclean’s own articles addressing this issue in Glasgow and Belfast are less penetrating. [43] This can be partly explained by the fact that Maclean lived in Glasgow, and Glasgow isn’t Belfast. Maclean, like Connolly, was also prepared to recommend the arguments of particular ministers or priests to buttress their case for Socialism. [44]

I remember once being told by an Anarchist that Connolly had failed to back a motion highlighting the role of the Catholic Church in the killing of Anarchist, Francesc Ferrer (presumably whilst Connolly was active in the Irish Socialist Federation in the USA). I haven’t been able to verify this. However, if it is true, then Maclean’s own non-aligned attitude to religion did indeed make him “a lot more comfortable” than Connolly’s Catholicism, whether genuine or feigned to win over Catholic workers. [45]

d) John Maclean and the linking of the Irish and Scottish Questions

Gerry also addresses the controversial question of Maclean’s attitude to Scottish nationalism. From my own political point of view, I think Gerry’s new evidence shows Maclean was attempting, very tentatively in 1917, but more definitely after 1920 to grapple with the Scottish Question. I think that rather than switching from Left British nationalism to Left Scottish nationalism, Maclean looked at the Scottish Question first through social democratic spectacles, but then he changed to socialist republican and communist spectacles. He was increasingly trying to link the exercise of Scottish self-determination with revolutionary economic and social change, in the context of the new International Revolutionary Wave.

This is where Gerry’s chapter 6, John Maclean – Green Clydesider, provides a lot of new evidence. I think, though, that Gerry’s tentative decision to view this through the lens of psychology takes us away from a better understanding of the change in Maclean’s politics. Gerry writes, “I am certainly no expert and definitely no psychologist but I find it fascinating.” [46] He explains Maclean’s conversion to support for Scottish republicanism in terms of a mid-life crisis. “It is my contention that a middle-aged man who had been through the wars, was thinking about who he was.” [47] Gerry suggests that Maclean was beginning to think more in terms of what today is termed “identity”. He concedes this “can be a dark art in politics.” [48]

Gerry, though, has already provided a lot of evidence to show that Maclean did not really think of his own welfare very much, something that proved to be fatal. Although he died at the early age of 44, I doubt that up until his last few days, he had any inkling that this would be his fate. So there was little consciousness of being a middle-aged man. Unwittingly, Gerry also provides evidence to show that adopting a psychological approach to understanding Maclean’s politics has its dangers. He quotes the Scottish Secretary’s of State, Robert Munro’s use of prison doctor’ papers to denigrate Maclean’s mental health, [49] and Willie Gallacher’s attempt to dismiss Maclean as suffering from “hallucinations”. [50] Gerry clearly understands the purpose behind such accusations. Their resort to attributing psychological motives was designed to divert attention from Maclean’s own political motivations – exposing the horrors of the First World War, [51] and the opportunism involved in the attempts to set up the Communist Party of Great Britain. [52]

I would argue that Maclean’s changing attitude to the Scottish Question is best explained in political terms. This is not to say that psychological motivations are unimportant. Gerry has already convincingly argued for the relevance of the personal in Maclean’s politics. But for Maclean politics dominated. I also think that Maclean’s more considered understanding of the Scottish Question did not precede, but followed his growing interest in Ireland. So, from my own political position, I think the material in Gerry’s two chapters before John Maclean – Green Clydesider, titled All Hail the Scottish Workers Republic, and a Middle Aged Man looks at the Thistle, could better be understood after reading about Maclean’s engagement with politics in Ireland. This isn’t an attempt to get Gerry to re-edit his book for the second edition, because the existing ordering is consistent with Gerry’s own politics. I would term a key aspect of these as being Left Scottish nationalism (and I don’t think Gerry would take offence at this), compared to my own Scottish internationalism, whilst clearly recognising our shared socialist republicanism.

e) The impact of the Russian Revolution and Maclean’s commitment to organising revolutionary struggle in these islands

I would argue that the five-year shift in Maclean’s political thinking, between 1917 and 1922, is best explained by the impact of the October Revolution in Russia and the struggle for Irish independence. The Russian Revolution came first. In recognition of his heroic anti-war work, and holding up the flag of internationalism, which so many social democrats had abandoned during the First World War. Maclean was made the Soviet Consul in Glasgow at the end of 1917. Maclean appreciated that there was an International Revolutionary Wave, with Russia at its epicentre. He believed now that a revolutionary situation had arrived, and that it was the job of Socialists to fight first for revolution in their own countries. [53] Until the revolutionary situation had fully ripened, this meant organising independent workers’ committees, pushing for independent working class education, and creating the maximum disruption to upset a belligerent, and decidedly anti-Bolshevik British ruling class.

This became a major factor in Maclean’s eventual break with the BSP. By 1916, the party’s anti-war members had already defeated the right wing of the BSP led by Henry Hyndman. Yet there was still a marked difference between the way Maclean and his Ukrainian-Russian ally in Scotland, Peter Petroff, had conducted their anti-war campaigning, compared to others, particularly in London. Both Maclean and Petroff paid a heavy personal price for their efforts and the greater political impact they had made on Clydeside. They both become subjected to a state persecution. In contrast, Theodore Rothstein, another Russian emigre, who was prominent in the BSP in London, spent the war translating and interpreting in the British War Office. [54] Maclean became more drawn to Sylvia Pankhurst (as Connolly had been), a leading member of the Workers’ Socialist Federation based in working class East London.

After the war, when Maclean was the Russian Consul, the divisions that had already arisen in the BSP, between a relatively passive and a militant opposition to the First World War, appeared in a new guise. Some wanted to concentrate more on making propaganda in support of the new Soviet Russia. Maclean and others thought that the opportunity should be taken to promote struggles that actively challenged the British state. Maclean’s approach had considerable bearing on his approach to Ireland.

f) The growing impact of the struggle for an Irish Republic on Maclean’s politics

In Maclean’s speech during his trial 1916 (before the Easter Rising), he “underscored the difference between himself and Connolly by asserting that while physical-force methods ‘might be good enough for men in Dublin’, they were inappropriate for the Clyde workers’ movement.” [55] Maclean was in prison at the time of the Easter Rising, and this comment has sometimes been interpreted as Maclean rejecting the rising. Maclean’s earlier personal history, with regard to Ireland, could reinforce such a view. [56] However, Maclean’s statement is more ambiguous than an anticipated repudiation of the 1916 Rising. It could also be interpreted as Maclean saying that Irish workers do things their way, whilst Scottish workers do things our way. This is not necessarily a rejection of the Irish way.

Gerry’s book provides us with a lot of new information, which can help us to explain the further change in Maclean’s thinking. Gerry outlines the growing links between Maclean and the Irish community, particularly those involved in the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Irish Volunteers and Sinn Fein. [57] When standing for the Glasgow Gorbals constituency, in the December 1918 UK general election, [58] Gerry highlights Maclean’s eve-of-poll speech. He demands not only the release of Eugene Debs and Big Bill Haywood in the USA, but also of Barney Friel and Joe Robinson, two Irish republican prisoners he had met in Peterhead Jail. [59]

Maclean’s growing support for Sinn Fein’s challenge to the British authorities formed part of his revolutionary strategy of creating the maximum mayhem for the British government. Yet, at this time, his support for the republican struggle in Ireland, and his own activities, primarily amongst trade unionists in Great Britain, formed parallel and not yet politically united activities. Maclean was pushing, particularly on Clydeside, to unite the most organised sections of the working class, especially the miners. Thus, he thought that the actions of the engineers in launching the 40 Hour Strike in Glasgow on 27th January 1919 were premature, and that they should have waited and organised joint action with the miners, to make a more decisive impact. [60] Maclean was campaigning amongst the miners of west Cumberland at the time of the 40 Hours Strike. [61]

The organisers of the Glasgow 40 Hours Strike were not prepared for the government’s use of troops. They backed down on February 10th, although concessions were granted. The miners then threatened to strike in March. A concerned British government made wage concessions and set up the Sankey Commission, [62] hinting that the coal industry would be nationalised. This was enough to derail the action. Maclean made his own political assessment in the light of the needs of a revolutionary movement across the UK. He did not give up and campaigned amongst the textile workers of the Colne Valley in Lancashire, and the railway workers in Huddersfield in June. [63] In every place he visited, he continued to argue for the development of independent workers’ committees ready to defy trade union officials, and for the setting up of educational classes to raise consciousness.

However, affairs in Ireland impinged on Maclean’s thinking once again. In 1919 “Constance Markiewicz, Maclean and Wheatley[ 64] spoke at the massive May Day rally in Glasgow attended by over 100,000 people including demobbed Russian solders and many from the Irish community. Red flags and Irish tricolours were flying side by side – Red and Green.” [65] Markiewicz was a recently elected Sinn Fein MP (she took her seat, not at Westminster, but in the Irish Republic’s Dail Eireann in Dublin). She talked with Maclean about the possibilities of joint Scottish and Irish action. Maclean was invited to speak in Dublin. [66] He made his visit in July. His direct encounter with the political situation in Ireland did much to make him further change his thinking. When he was in Dublin, he was challenged both for his remaining unthinking British unionist views (calling Great Britain “the mainland”) and his political naivity, when he suggested that Irish workers shouldn’t antagonise the soldiers of the occupation. These criticisms prompted Maclean into some deeper thinking. Only the first hints of this can be seen in his own report following the meeting. [67]

One thing that must have been on his mind, in making a comparison between Great Britain and Ireland though, had been the ability of the British government to cow the leaders of the 40 Hours Strike in Glasgow, through the use of troops in January and February that year. Yet from 15th-27th April, the Limerick Trades and Labour Council had organised a successful general strike in defiance of British Army, which declared the city a Special Military Area. They used troops, armoured vehicles and the RIC attempted to control people’s movement. In reply, the Limerick strike committee or soviet, as it was dubbed at the time, controlled food prices, printed its own money and newspaper. [68]

The motivating factor behind this was the Irish workers’ challenge to the UK state’s attempt to increasingly militarise Irish society. This followed Sinn Fein’s landslide victory in the UK general election of December 1918. This had been achieved under far more repressive conditions than existed in Great Britain. Despite the easier conditions here for Labour and Socialist candidates, the War Coalition candidates triumphed. For Maclean this was underscored by his defeat, as the official Labour Party (and BSP) candidate by a Coalition Labour candidate, George Barnes.

In 1919, Ireland was still under military occupation and 34 of Sinn Fein’s candidates were in jail. The First Republic was declared and Dail Eireann set up in January, once again in defiance of the UK authorities. This coincided with the first armed attacks by the Irish Volunteers since Easter Rising in 1916. Maclean began to appreciate that, political and democratic concerns, which addressed the nature of the state, could provide a deeper motivation for revolutionary action than the economic issues, which he had seen as the main engine of revolutionary change up to this point. [69]

g) Maclean’s break with the BSP and a British road to socialism

Nevertheless, Maclean remained a member of the BSP throughout 1919. In his articles in its paper, The Call, he still praised the post-split BSP, and talks of “British Labour”, and “the growing solidarity of English speaking people.” [70] The next step in the transition in his thinking occurs at the time of the attempts to form a new Communist party. In August 1919, Maclean still saw the BSP as playing a central role in this and welcomed unity with the Socialist Labour Party, the Workers’ Socialist Federation and the South Wales Socialist Society. [71]

However, by the time the founding conference of the Communist Party took place in London on July 31st 1920, Maclean had been edged out of the BSP. Gerry provides a lot of information about these events. [72] At the heart of his disagreement was the issue of how workers should organise in the context of the International Revolutionary Wave. Another issue was Maclean’s questioning of the leading role given in the new party to people with relatively little experience, or who had even shown earlier hostility to socialism. Not surprisingly, in the context of all the forces arraigned against the infant Soviet Union, the Bolshevik leaders welcomed support from whatever quarter. Maclean became worried as Russian state financial and behind-the-scenes political backing was given to some unsavoury characters. He noted, in particular, the leadership role given to Lieutenant Colonel Cecil L’Estrange Malone MP. [73] He had recently been elected as a Coalition Liberal MP, and been a prominent member of the anti-communist Restoration Society. His was a very recent conversion to the cause. He was never going to make any decisions based on experience of working class struggle. This also ensured that he was never likely to challenge any instructions from Russia. Maclean also noticed the prominent position given to Theodore Rothstein and his political machinations. [74] Maclean was probably thinking of the contrast with his wartime comrade, Peter Petroff. He had been released from prison and was now banned from the UK, just as the British authorities banned Maclean from visiting Russia, despite being the Soviet Consul.

Maclean, realising that he was being marginalised, by the UK state and the new forces, which were being given official Bolshevik backing, resurrected The Vanguard. [75] He had spent 1919 pushing for the formation of workers’ committees, which were meant to form the forces necessary to make the social revolution he was struggling for. However, after the defeat of the 40 Hours Strike and the government’s conciliation of the miners and rail workers, this prospect had receded. Trade union actions, which had been planned in 1919 to lower working hours, in order to create more jobs and prevent a rise in unemployment, had failed. Maclean turned his attention to organising the unemployed, including ex-soldiers. But, he now fully appreciated that the front line of struggle against the UK state lay in Ireland. The first issue of The Vanguard opened with the lines, “Irishmen say that Ireland is unbeatable; we say that The Vanguard is irrepressible.” [76]

Maclean formed the Tramp Trust Unlimited, along with Harry McShane and James McDougall, [77] two close comrades from the BSP, in the old Vanguard days. They produced the pamphlet, The Irish Tragedy: Scotland’s Disgrace. [78] They toured Scotland, held meetings, and sold tens of thousands of copies. This pamphlet is the first piece of writing, which Maclean had written, in which he very explicitly linked the political position of Ireland and Scotland within the same oppressive state. “My plea is that Britain has no right to dominate Ireland with constabulary armed with bombs, and with an army and navy considered foreign by the Irish. We Scots have been taught to revere the names of Sir William Wallace and Robert Bruce because these doughty men of old are recorded as championing the cause of freedom when Edward I and Edward II tried to absorb Scotland as part of English territory. All Scots must therefore appreciate the plight of Ireland, which for over seven centuries has chafed under the same English yoke.” [79]

In this powerful and very well informed pamphlet, Maclean shows how closely he was reading the regular bulletins issued by the First Irish Republic. However, the pamphlet also his difficulty in moving to a more consistent socialist republican, ‘internationalism from below’ strategy. My comments are not designed to be a ‘smart Alec’, after the event, put-down, so loved by many Socialist sects, when describing historical and political events. Rather they are designed to help illuminate the changes that were taking place under specific political conditions. It is only in the light of subsequent events, which give us the privilege of new knowledge, that we can begin to understand how very real people, not Socialist ‘saints’, struggle to come to terms with profound changes.

Maclean’s “English yoke” in the first issue of The Vanguard characterisation does not help us understand what was really going on in the two periods he addressed. During the days of “Edward I and Edward II”, the Kingdom of England lay within the Angevin Empire. It was led not by an English, but by a French speaking ruling class. It would take another century before the English language became the language of state in England. [80] Furthermore, in Maclean’s times, the Scottish members of the British ruling class had been sharing in the exploitation of the UK and British Empire for more than two centuries, following the 1707 Act of Union. Such brutal events as the Enclosures, and the breaking of artisans’ power in the textile areas of England, showed that the English ‘lower orders’ had also been subject to the ‘English yoke”. [81] The Marquess of Stafford had enclosed his lands in England, whilst his wife, the Duchess of Sutherland, was clearing her Highland estates. Those who had been occupying the land in both areas were victims of a British ruling class . Within their UK state, the English-British and Scottish-British components of this class made sure that their shared class interests prevailed, just as they did elsewhere in the UK and British Empire. Consequently, the “English yoke” could be better described as the “British yoke”. But the transitional nature of Maclean’s thinking in this pamphlet is shown in the first line, which does name ‘Britain’ as the oppressor power.

h) Maclean’s changing approach to the Scottish Question explained in the light of his switch from Left social democracy to socialist republicanism and his commitment to support the Bolsheviks

Gerry introduces us to Maclean’s involvement with the Scottish Question as early as 1917. [82] Political pressure had been building up over this issue towards the end of the First World War. There was a political background to this. Many in the ILP, in particular, were committed to the Scottish pole of their Scottish-British identities. Strong support for Scottish Home Rule had been shown in the Glasgow-based paper, Forward, edited by Tom Johnston and Roland Muirhead. Maclean had written Scottish Notes in the BSP paper, Justice, under the pseudonym ‘Gael’, and had supported a Scottish national council for the BSP. He regularly used his column to support crofters’ struggles. However, because of Maclean’s economistic approach, at that time, he was less interested in the constitution of the UK state, and hence was lukewarm towards the idea of Scottish Home Rule. I haven’t been able to find any mention of Maclean writing about the 1913 Scottish Home Rule Bill, which passed through Westminster House of Commons. Further progress for this bill was blocked by the onset of the First World War. [83] Nevertheless, with the exception of Socialist Labour Party, Home Rule for Scotland was supported throughout the Scottish Left.

As the First World War was coming to an end, the Labour Party, in preparation for the forthcoming general election, officially removed itself from the Wartime Coalition. Trade union leaders, who had assisted the government’s clampdown on workers’ rights, pay and conditions, began to consider improvements, once the war ended. Gerry shows that there was a renewed interest in the issue of Scottish Home Rule. This was addressed by trade unions, the STUC, the ILP and the Highland Land League. [84] In the autumn of 1917, the STUC sent a deputation to the Prime Minister calling for separate Scottish representation at the post-war Peace Conference.

This is the context, in which Gerry lets us know that Maclean was approached “to sign a petition for Scottish representation at the Peace Conference. He sympathised but didn’t sign saying that the Bolsheviks were the true friends of Scottish Home Rule not Woodrow Wilson.” [85] Then Gerry suggests that, “Maclean changed his tune.” [86] I agree with Gerry that Maclean was beginning to develop his position on Scotland. However, it would take until August 1920 before Maclean first issued the leaflet titled, All Hail, the Scottish Workers Republic, [87] and until November 1922, before Maclean formed an organisation, the Scottish Workers Republican Party, to campaign on the basis of socialist republican politics.

The reason for Maclean’s refusal to sign the petition was due to a combination of two things. In 1917, Maclean still adhered to a politics, where workers’ economic struggles were given primacy. The Scottish Home Rule, which he supported on paper, was not a priority. But Maclean’s polite refusal to sign was more linked to his view of the role of any forthcoming peace conference organised by the imperial victors. In the run-up to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, US President Wilson had used his ‘Fourteen Points’ to declare his support for the right of national self-determination. However, this had been done to counter the Bolsheviks’ earlier declaration of support for national self-determination. When it came to the Peace Conference, it was only the representatives of nations within the defeated states that were listened to. Those representing the nations within the victor states, including people within the American and British empires, were studiously ignored. Maclean’s comment that “the Bolsheviks were the true friends of Scottish Home Rule” [88] highlights his understanding of this.

A similar division occurred amongst those fighting for an Irish Republic. Maclean’s friend, James Larkin, then living in the USA, remained scornful of those tail-ending Wilson. It took until the end of the Irish Civil War in 1923 before the USA recognised Ireland. The Bolsheviks made several attempts to link up with the First Irish Republic. Furthermore, those Scottish Labour and trade union organisations, which opted for the imperial victors’ ‘Peace Conference road to Scottish Home Rule’, were quick to retreat when Labour got its place under the Westminster sun in the 1922 general election. This would better explain why people like “(David} Kirkwood and {Tom} Johnston would abandon {their earlier} thoughts of national committee in Scotland {raised at the time of the proposed Peace Conference} whilst Maclean remained true to his Republic.” [89] They had become integrated into official British Labour politics, with its acceptance of the UK state. Maclean’s opposition to the Peace Conference, was followed later by his conversion from being a Left social democrat, to becoming a republican socialist, and a supporter of a Scottish Workers’ Republic – hence his ability to remain “true to his Republic”.

i) The missing Labour in Scottish History and the need for a socialist republican ‘internationalism from below’ politics today

Nevertheless, I think that Gerry is right to point to the impact of certain Scottish nationalists, particularly Ruaraidh Erskine of Marr, upon Maclean’s thinking from 1919. Gerry points to a major weakness of Maclean’s Scottish Labour College, set up in 1916. [90] This was recognised by a small group of Left Scottish nationalists. One of their journals, the Scottish Review, “criticised… a missed opportunity to raise questions of Scottish history and culture in the curriculum.” [91] This was largely due to Maclean’s own economistic approach to Marxism at the time.

Gerry’s personal “thoughts are strengthened by the fact that Maclean”, unlike Connolly in Ireland, “did not develop any new theories or write extensively on Scottish history.” [92] For me this is a decided weakness. Maclean (like Connolly) had been a contributor to Forward. He would have read the historical articles written by Thomas Johnston of the ILP and Roland Muirhead of the Liberal Party affiliated Young Scots. Many of Johnston’s articles were eventually published in 1920 as the History of the Working Classes in Scotland. These were written from a Left Scottish-British unionist point of view.

Maclean wrote a review of this book in The Vanguard. [93]. The really striking feature, missing from Maclean’s review of Johnston’s History of the Working Classes in Scotland, is that it does not deal with Johnston’s inadequate approach to the struggles of the ‘lower orders’. Johnston terms these people “the working classes”, making no real distinction between peasants, artisans or wage slaves. He mainly sees them as long suffering victims of the Scottish nobles and then capitalists. In contrast, Connolly’s Labour in Irish History is organised around the struggles between the ‘lower orders’ and the ruling class against the imposition of feudalism and capitalism. Johnston wanted potential Labour voters to sympathise with the victims of Scottish history, the better to get their support for an elected Labour government. Connolly wanted Socialists to understand the struggles of those clans, peasants, artisans and workers had organised for their own class ends throughout Irish history. Labour in Irish History, and its more activist related follow-up, The Reconquest of Ireland, were designed to help the Irish working class maintain its class independence, and to actively challenge the liberal unionists , Irish nationalists, and their right Labour camp followers, in order to create a new society.

A result of this was that, in contrast to Maclean, Connolly had a much clearer understanding of the need to challenge nationalist historical myth-making. He fiercely criticised the role of the Jacobites in The Jacobites and the Irish people, and the Irish nationalist icon, Daniel O’Connell, in A chapter of horrors: Daniel O’Connell and the working class. Maclean never got round to writing a Labour in Scottish History to challenge Left Scottish British unionists or the Scottish nationalists.

A socialist republican Labour in Scottish History would have subjected Scottish nationalist icons to withering criticism. Thus Robert the Bruce might not be seen so much as the guarantor of the continued existence of a Scottish state, but as the leader of those Scottish lords, who wanted to bring the more popular struggle, which had been started by William Wallace, under their firm control. They wanted feudal normality restored in Scotland. [94] The Jacobite leaders of 1689, 1715 and 1745 would not be seen as the champions of the clans (a bit problematic given the history of the Stewart/Stuart dynasty in the suppression of clan society!), but as one set of dynastic claimants trying to reclaim the Crown of the Three Kingdoms – England included.

Instead, as Gerry demonstrates, Maclean picked up elements of the Left Scottish nationalist historical thinking and used them to buttress his own political arguments. [95] It is to Gerry’s credit though, that tempting though it must have been from a Left nationalist point of view, he acknowledges that John Maclean never became a Scottish nationalist. [96] His Westminster election address of November 1922 proudly opened with, “I stand in the Gorbals and before the world as a Bolshevik, alias a Communist, alias a Revolutionist.” [97] By this time, Maclean had arrived at his most fully developed socialist republican, ‘internationalism from below’, ‘break-up of the UK and British Empire road to communism’ politics.

The tragedy was Maclean’s new understanding occurred as the International Revolutionary Wave was ending. In the infant Soviet Union, official CPSU one party rule had ended any effective workers’ control of society. A new unionist state emerged – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It quickly attracted the support of many Left British unionists, living in the Union of Great Britain and (by now) Northern Ireland [98]. Their attitude to Scottish self-determination was coloured by the arguments used to defend the top-down imposed unity of the USSR. The USSR constitution provided a ‘guarantee’ for national self-determination. The problem was that within the CPSU, the only legal party, it was effectively a crime, punishable by internal exile, incarceration in a mental institution, or a Siberian gulag, to raise the issue of the exercise of national self-determination. Today we can clearly see the parallels in an older unionist state – the UK. This state, which ‘guarantees’ each participant nation’s self-determination through its devolved institutions, can over-ride these powers at any time, under the Crown Powers and the sovereignty of Westminster. In Scotland, during IndyRef1 we were told of the ‘parity of esteem’ between the member nations of the UK. ‘Governor General’ David Mundell, though, has reminded us of the reality. “Scotland is not a partner in the UK, but part of the UK.” (99) There were times when the USSR celebrated the various cultures within its official multi-nation federal set-up. This was provided there was no challenge to the continued unity of the state. The UK state has taken a similar attitude to the cultures of the nations within its boundaries.

Furthermore, Maclean’s death in 1923 coincided with the demise of the First Irish Republic, following the brutal UK-imposed Civil War. This led to Partition and Connolly’s prophecy of a “carnival of reaction”[100] north and south. And in Scotland, 1923 saw the publication of the Church of Scotland’s notorious Church and Nation report, On the menace of the Irish race to our Scottish nationality. This heralded a period when reactionary unionism and loyalism increased its support, culminating in the Scottish Protestant League winning 23% of the vote and 3 seats on Glasgow council in 1932, and Protestant Action winning 31% of the vote and 9 seats on Edinburgh city council in 1936. Throughout this period (and much longer), the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party continued to be linked to the Ulster Unionist Party and the Orange Order.

Gerry’s concluding chapter introduces us to lot of fascinating material. It shows how Maclean’s memory was preserved, particularly in the cultural field. [101] This chapter is entitled The Politics of Failure or the Failure of Politics. I think that Gerry is successful in showing that far from representing the politics of failure, Maclean’s politics anticipated those required today. Gerry has made a significant contribution to placing John Maclean once more in the political realm. This is at a time when more and more people are seeing the need to re-boot the democratic revolution, which began during IndyRef1. This now needs to be taken on to a conscious Scottish republican path and extended on an ‘internationalism from below’ basis. Under today’s political conditions, with a reactionary unionist Tory-DUP governmental alliance, this can not be achieved without challenging the UK state’s Crown Powers.

As Hamish Henderson, the author the John Maclean March boldly said – Freedom Come All Ye!

Footnotes and References

[1] I think Gerry would be amongst the first to acknowledge the pioneering work in this regard of Stevie Coyle of the 1916 Rising Centenary Committee – Scotland. The source for much of Gerry’s new research is to be found in the recently recovered papers of Seamus Reader, who was a member of the Fianna Eireann in Glasgow. Stevie provided much encouragement. In the lead-up to the Easter Rising, Reader smuggled munitions to the Irish Volunteers in Belfast and Dublin. Reader’s papers came into the possession of the well-known Scottish singer, Eddi Reader. Seamus was her great uncle. She hopes to get these papers published. (https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/eddi-reader-reveals-great-uncle-s-life-as-ira-chief-1-3117293)

[2] Gerard Cairns, The Red and the Green – A Portrait of John Maclean (TRatG), p. 2 (self published, September 2017, Glasgow)

[3] The three earlier periods, when this the issue came to the fore, were during the land and labour, ‘internationalism from below’ alliance formed at the time of Land Leagues struggles from 1879; immediately after the First World War, during the 1916-21/23 International Revolutionary Wave; and towards the end of, and immediately after, the Second World War. I have written about the first in my book from Davitt to Connolly, with the second in my forthcoming book, From Pre-Brit to Ex-Brit, and with the third in Britishness, the UK State, Unionism, Scotland and the ‘National Outsider’ (http://republicancommunist. org/blog/2016/03/02/britishness-the-uk-state-unionism-scotland-and-the-national-outsider/)

[4] Ray also was instrumental in inviting a young Bernadette Devlin (later McAliskey) to speak at Aberdeen University. Ray was one of the earliest people on the Left to outline the political significance of the Scotland-Ireland connection. He later went on to publish the excellent but short-lived magazine Calgacus. Its demise partly came about due to the pressure of some not wanting the connection between Ireland and Scotland to be made. Ray was also a contributor to the Red Paper on Scotland and to the research for The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil. He has continued to write on the connections between Scottish and Irish history, particularly in our shared city of birth, Edinburgh. Ray contributes to bella caledonia.

[5] I started a Gaelic course when I was at Aberdeen University, but soon dropped out because lectures started at 9.00 am. No other lectures I attended started until 11.00 am! I tried again at a night class in Edinburgh’s Boroughmuir High School, once I started teaching. After two weeks it was disrupted by a janitors’ strike! Well yes, my commitment was pretty pathetic.

In the end, I became a supporter of the Gaelic language instead. When the Skye and Lochalsh branch of the EIS put forward a motion to the national AGM arguing for union support for Gaelic language provision, I came in as a speaker from the Central Belt to support them. The motion faced considerable opposition. It was passed and I went on to write an introduction to a pamphlet written by Gaelic speaker and teacher, Gwen Mulholland, entitled The Struggle for a Language. Scottish Rank & File Teachers published it. We received a grant for printing from the Scottish Highland and Islands Board, certainly the only state support we got for any of our activities!

[6] With the exception of James Hunter, also at Aberdeen University whilst I was there, I can think of no SNP member from that period, whose historical work made much impact on the Left. And Hunter’s influence came later when he wrote the path-breaking and highly influential The Making of the Crofting Community. Significantly, he could not get a job in a Scottish university history department, then very much dominated by a North British outlook. Gerry acknowledges Hunter’s work on p.109.

[8] This coincided with the 1972 Miners’ Strike. My friend, the late Andrew McGeever, came from a Fife mining family and had miner contacts in Dunfermline. By the time of the 1974 strike, another miner, George Duff, who worked at ‘Nitton’ (Newtongrange), had become involved in the IS. Both Andrew and George (who has become a talented performer of traditional music) also encouraged my interest in different aspects of Scottish and Irish culture.

[9] It wasn’t until the general election of 2015 that such a political irony was duplicated in Edinburgh, when Labour’s right wing Ian Murray, supporter of ‘Project Fear’, ended up representing the party’s last Scottish Westminster seat in ‘Red Morningside’!

[10] The jibe ‘Tartan Tory’ was common enough at the time, buttressed by the politics of such prominent SNP members. However, it would be more accurate to describe the SNP at the time as a populist party with Left (e.g. Margo MacDonald) and Right elements. This often reflected the existing political nature of the areas where these people campaigned. It took a conscious political effort by Alex Salmond, Jim Sillars and others from the 79 Group to convert the SNP into a social democratic style party that could appeal to many more workers in the Central Belt.

[11] The SLP was Jim Sillars’ breakaway Scottish Labour Party, which formed in 1976 and was dissolved in 1981. Sillars went on to join the SNP as part of its social democratic, Central Belt-orientated 79 Group.

[12] Duncan Hallas, a key IS and SWP theoretician, at the time, provided guidance. He undertook this task, because my political approach to the National Question would then have followed Rosa Luxemburg. Hallas ensured that my piece was reworked so that it followed what the SWP would have considered orthodox Leninism. He was not dogmatic in his approach to me, but did this in a subtle and persuasive manner.

Maybe I should later have spent some time visiting all the bookshops where this pamphlet was stocked to remove them all, just as Labour’s Tom Johnston allegedly did with his Our Noble Families, when he joined the British government! However, I think the existence of this pamphlet still serves a useful purpose. It shows that a Left Scottish-British unionist supporter can abandon such politics. Indeed, many other Scottish Socialists have such skeletons in their cupboard. Some day they should be collected together in a Museum of Britishness!

[13] Ironically Tony Cliff possibly saved us. He supported Scottish Devolution. This was certainly not on anti-state or republican grounds, but on anti-Tory grounds, as Thatcher’s star was rising. Cliff brought in Harry MacShane to try and help him at a Scottish SWP aggregate meeting held in Glasgow. However, two of the SWP’s well-regarded Glasgow shop stewards, Peter Bain and Jimmy MacCallum, triumphed. They were both adamantly opposed to Devolution, mainly on the grounds that Britain united the working class. This aggregate was not well attended, because it was held on the same day as the England-Scotland football championship match. I think that only ‘revolutionary discipline’ had persuaded Peter and Jimmy to attend, and I seem to remember they were near to tears when Scotland lost!

[14] Recently, the SWP, back in its British Left mode, campaigned for Lexit not Remain. Now, more marginalised on the Left than they were in 1979, the SWP in its own small way contributed to the defeat of Remain. But instead of Lexit they have got May and the DUP!

[15] For example, I spoke at a poll tax registration form burning protest in Blaenau Ffestiniog’s main street. This was at the request of Marc Jones, a Welsh socialist republican. I have been in contact with Marc ever since. On September 13th, 2014, Marc was with the Welsh contingent at the Radical Independence Campaign’s multi-national pre-referendum rally on The Meadows. Characteristically the Welsh contingent burst out into song!

[17] The Republican Workers Tendency replaced the RDG and promoted the socialist republican, ‘internationalism from below,’ ‘break-up of the UK and British Empire strategy’ first developed by Connolly and Maclean. George Mackin and Dave Hewitt and some supporters of the journal, Liberation, were also involved in the Scottish Republican Forum. They argued for Scottish and Irish republican politics within the SNP.

[18] I was first drawn to an interest in the Covenanters because of their close resemblance to the Left in terms of their politics (their theocratic republicanism prefigured bureaucratic socialism), their organisation (their ministers, awarded a leading role in all their activities, resembled Communist commissars). They gained their wider influence during their heroic struggles against Charles II and James VI/II in the Killing Time. They attained their maximum influence in 1689, in the first phase of the Glorious Revolution, when they formed a regiment of Cameronians (prefiguring the Red Guards). When they had been marginalised, they became fragmented. Trotskyist sects followed their subsequent splits almost to the point of parody. (Beyond Broadswords and Bayonets, Chapter 6.iii) and footnote 128 (http://republicancommunist. org/blog/2003/08/03/beyond-broadswords-and-bayonets- 2/#SectionSixThree). The legacy of the Covenanters had a significant impact on the Radical wing of the Friends of the People and the infant working class movement in Scotland (http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2003/08/03/beyond-broadswords-and-bayonets-2/#SectionEight)

[19] Gerard Cairns, TRatG, op. cit. p.24

[20] ibid. p. 158

[21] ibid. p. 162

[22] ibid. pp. 183 and 163

[23] Yet there was still a political difference between Maclean and Connolly over their attitude towards women’s struggles. In 1913 Maclean was dismissing women suffragists, including ILP member Helen Crawfurd, (Scottish Notes in Justice, 21.6.13). She was later to play a leading role in the Glasgow Rent Strikes. Compared to the sectarian BSP and SLP, the ILP’s leader, Keir Hardie, allowed women members some freedom of action. Connolly, however, as a socialist republican, went much further and made the connection between the militant Women’s and the Syndicalist Movements in the UK. In The Reconquest of Ireland Connolly clearly stated that, “The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave”. This advanced understanding of oppression enabled Connolly to see the “spreading wave of martyrdom of the militant women of Great Britain and Ireland, and the spread amongst active spirits of the Labour movement of an appreciation of the genuineness of the women’s longings for freedom.” He championed the autonomous organisation of women within the IT&GWU under the banner of the Irish Women’s Workers Union formed by Delia Larkin in 1911, and the Belfast based Irish Women’s Textile Union Women led by Winifred Carney.

[30] Following the logic of this transition in Maclean’s thought, and seeing him as the real continuation of the ethical moralism of the Free Church of Scotland, Gerry, slightly tongue-in-cheek, dubs him “the Moderator of the Free Kirk General Assembly” (p. 196). Taking on board Maclean’s continued resort to biblical language, but also recognising his own conscious departure from the Free Kirk, I would suggest an alteration of Gerry’s characterisation – John Maclean – ‘the Moderator of the Scottish Marxians’!

[42] “I believe that it is true to say that, politically speaking, the Protestantism of the North of Ireland has no parallel outside this country, and that the Catholicism of the Irish Catholics is, likewise, peculiar in its political trend.

To explain – I mean that, whereas, Protestantism has in general made for political freedom and political Radicalism, it has been opposed to slavish worship of kings and aristocrats. Here, in Ireland, the word Protestant is almost a convertible term with Toryism, lickspittle loyalty, servile worship of aristocracy and hatred of all that savours of genuine political independence on the part of the “lower classes”.

And in the same manner, Catholicism which in most parts of Europe is synonymous with Toryism, lickspittle loyalty, servile worship of aristocracy and hatred of all that savours of genuine political independence on the part of the lower classes, in Ireland is almost synonymous with rebellious tendencies, zeal for democracy, and intense feelings of solidarity with all strivings upward of those who toil.”

[45] There has been a long debate over whether Connolly was really a Catholic. Those people who argue that Connolly’s Catholicism was feigned can use his reply to long-term political friend and Scottish SLP member, John Carstairs Matheson. In this he wrote that, “I habitually posed as a Catholic. I have not done my duty for 15 years and have not the slightest faith left.” (Donal Nevin, James Connolly – ‘A Full Life’, p. 679.) In contrast, Jack Carney, a Belfast colleague of Connolly, wrote that, “Connolly was a practising Catholic. Few people knew this” (p.678). Certainly, Connolly was attended by Catholic priests on his deathbed and at his final execution. He also asked his wife, Lillie (brought up as a Protestant, but effectively lapsed) to become a member of the Catholic Church. However, those of Connolly’s children who also became Socialists, even though baptised, did not show many Catholic convictions. So it is unlikely that Connolly pushed Catholicism at home. Connolly would have followed Catholic social practices through his family’s engagement with the wider world. Non-religious provision for births, marriages and deaths was not very widespread, or socially accepted, particularly in Ireland, or Irish migrant communities. The Catholic Church provided the main form of welfare in a society where poverty and social degradation was rife. Connolly was also organising an overwhelmingly Irish Catholic working class, which showed its militancy, particularly during the 1913-4 Dublin Lock-Out. Thus there is evidence consistent with Connolly being either a Catholic believer or a social Catholic. To me, it is more important that Connolly was secular and non-sectarian in his approach to politics.

[56] Maclean first engaged with politics in Ireland, when he was asked to speak to the Belfast Socialist Society in August 1907. Maclean, then an SDF member, sent in a report to Justice. His political conclusion was that, “The strikers and thousands of workers knew that they must cease quarrelling about Catholicism and Protestantism, because thus they would be playing the game of the capitalists. I believe religious riots are a thing of the past, consequent upon the eyes of the people having been opened to the scurrility of the party press and to the treachery of the party politicians, both Nationalists and Unionists alike.” (https://www.marxists.org/archive/maclean/works/1907-belfast.htm)

Ah, if only it was that easy! Clearly Maclean’s very economistic understanding of Marxism had led him to believe that militant trade union struggles were enough to overcome sectarian divisions. There was no understanding of the nature of the UK state, and how it operated in Ireland, particularly north-east Ulster.

In 1913, Maclean reported on the large Glasgow meeting organised by the ILP, and chaired by Tom Johnston. It was part of the Fiery Cross campaign organised by Jim Larkin, James Connolly and others to win active solidarity for the workers in the Dublin Lock Out. Maclean had been writing about many of the disputes in Scotland, which formed part of the Syndicalist inspired Great Unrest. Most active workers realised that the Dublin Lock-Out was the most significant struggle yet to come out of this unrest. Yet, all that Maclean reports is a BSP intervention at the meeting announcing the death of one of their leading members, Harry Quelch! (We Feel Harry’s Loss, Scottish Notes, Justice, 27.9.1913 (https://www. marxists.org/archive/maclean/1913/scottish-notes.htm )

[57] In chapter 7, Gerry also shows the significant links between Glasgow based Irish republicans, trade unionists and Socialists in the run-up to the Easter Rising. In 2015, SIPTU, the successor union to the Irish Transport & General Workers Union of Larkin, Connolly and Fearon (the three James), published all the issues of The Workers Republic from the run-up to the Easter Rising. Several articles cover Glasgow trade union and republican activities. Furthermore, The Workers Republic was sold in the Glasgow offices of the Syndicalist and Socialist, Herald League. However, at this time, it was Dublin and Belfast looking to Glasgow, not Maclean looking to Ireland. That came later. The evidence in Gerry’s book suggests 1918.

[58] The BSP was affiliated to the Labour Party. Maclean, still in prison, was put forward as a candidate for the Gorbals constituency against George Barnes. This was partly a tactic to get Maclean out of prison. Sinn Fein had successfully used this in the South Longford by-election in May. Barnes had served in the Wartime Coalition, but was still refusing to break with it despite the war having ceased a month earlier. He stood as a Labour Coalition candidate in defiance of official Labour Party. The government was so concerned by Maclean’s candidature, that it released him soon before the election to prevent him getting voted in as a jailed martyr.

Nevertheless, the 40 Hours Strike did initially make a major impact, not only in Scotland, but also in Newcastle and Sheffield and Belfast. This was a product of the International Revolutionary Wave. January 1919 marked the highpoint of that particular wave in the UK, with the declaration of the first Irish Republic, and the 40 Hours Strike in Glasgow. Unfortunately, Connolly was dead, Larkin was in the USA, and Maclean had yet to develop a socialist republican ‘internationalism from below’ politics. Neither the formation of the CPGB in 1920, nor the Third International, provided the political basis for a ‘break-up of the UK and British Empire road to communism’. Maclean was still at an early stage in the development of his own socialist republicanism.

[64] John Wheatley had organised the Catholic Socialist Society, which Maclean had addressed. He was a member of the ILP and later became Minister of Health in the first Labour (minority) government in 1924. He is best remembered for his Housing Act.

[69] However, after the defeat of the 40 Hours Strike, the government’s conciliation of the miners and NUR general secretary’s ability to block action by his rail worker members, this immediate prospect ended. Maclean later acknowledged this in his Open Letter to Leninin January 1921 (https://www.marxists.org/ archive/maclean/works/1921-oll.htm.)

[75] https://www.marxists.org/archive/maclean/works/1920-tvr.htm. The earlier version of The Vanguard had acted as the voice of BSP members on Clydeside. It then became the voice of opposition to the BSP’s right wing leadership under Henry Hyndman. The government closed it down in December 1915 because of its campaign against conscription.

[80] In Scotland, the Norman-French military adventurers invited in by the Gaelic Kings of Alba had very successfully merged into the Scottish ruling class. At the time of what became later known as the Scottish Wars of Independence, the main contenders for the Scottish throne were the Balliols (de Baileul), the Comyns (de Commine) and the Bruces (de Brus). The Stewarts (Fitzallan) followed the Bruces to the throne in 1371. All of these Norman-French families originally held land in Norman England, and in some cases in France too.

[81] The Luddite resistance to this attack on their livelihoods led to the stationing of more troops, in the affected areas, than were being fielded by Wellington in the Peninsular War against Napoleon at the same time.

[88] The fact that Maclean refers to Scottish Home Rule, rather than Scottish self-determination, shows that he has not yet given the Scottish Question much thought. He falls back on the old Scottish-British Liberal, Radical and Left understanding of the Home Rule. This was most associated with the thinking behind the Liberals’ 1913 Scottish Home Rule Bill.

[95] However, Socialists need to look at the material written by Left Scottish Nationalists, since without doing this, a full understanding of the politics of the period cannot be achieved. It is amazing that even today, with the SNP, in office for eleven years, there has been no anthology of articles from the Young Scots or the early Scottish nationalist magazines, Scottish Review and Guth na Bliadhna. It is to Gerry’s credit that he has examined this material, and even more that he has learned Gaelic. Gaelic is needed to fully understand this and other periods of Scottish history.

[98] A divide opened up though between those in the CPGB and some of their Left Labour supporters, and other more mainstream Labour supporters. The first group was prepared to concede that the holder of the ‘baton of progress’ in the world had passed to the USSR. The other British roaders still awarded ‘Britain’ that role.

http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/22/allan-armstrong-reviews-the-red-and-the-green-by-gerard-cairns/feed/1FEELING POWERS GROWINGhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/17/feeling-powers-growing/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/17/feeling-powers-growing/#respondSun, 17 Jun 2018 23:18:24 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12529The question about how socialists or communists should organise is the subject of this interchange between Silvia Federici and carla bergman and Nick Montgomery. It was posted by bella caledonia (https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/06/08/feeling-powers-growing-an-interview-with-silvia-federici/).

FEELING POWERS GROWING – AN INTERVIEW WITH SILVIA FEDERICI

Silvia Federici

This interview was conducted by carla bergman and Nick Montgomery for Joyful Militancy(building thriving resistance in toxic times) published by AK Press. Silvia Federici is an Italian activist and author of many works, including Caliban and the Witch and Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. She was co-founder of the International Feminist Collective and organizer with the Wages for Housework Campaign in the ‘70s. In it they discuss new ways of acting and destructive cultures within political movements.

Silvia Federici: My politics resonate with your idea of “joyful militancy.” I’m a strong believer that either your politics is liberating and that gives you joy, or there’s something wrong with them.

I’ve gone through phases of “sad politics” myself and I’ve learned to identify the mistakes that generate it. It has many sources. But one factor is the tendency to exaggerate the importance of what we can do by ourselves, so that we always feel guilty for not accomplishing enough.

When I was thinking about this conversation, I was reminded of Nietzsche’s metamorphoses in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and his image of the camel. The camel is the prototype of the militant who burdens herself with huge amounts of work, because she thinks that the destiny of the world depends on her overwork. Inevitably she’s always saddened because the goal is always receding and she does not have the time to be fully present to her life and recognize the transformative possibilities inherent to her work.

carla and Nick: You said that you feel like there are so many sources to sad militancy [1] and can you speak to some more of those?

Federici: Sad militancy comes from setting goals that you cannot achieve, so that the outcome is always out of reach, always projected into the future and you feel continuously defeated. “Sad politics “ is also defining your struggle in purely oppositional terms, which puts you in a state of permanent tension and failure. A joyful politics is a politics that is constructive and prefigurative. I’m encouraged by the fact that more people today see that you cannot continuously postpone the achievement of your goals to an always receding future.

Joyful politics is politics that change your life for the better already in the present. This is not to deny that political engagement often involves suffering. In fact our political involvement often is born of suffering. But the joy is knowing and deciding that we can do something about it, it is recognizing that we share our pain with other people, is feeling the solidarity of those around us. Militants in Argentina speak of “politicizing our sadness.”

This is why I don’t believe in the concept of “self-sacrifice,” where self-sacrifice means that we do things that go against our needs, our desires, our potentials, and for the sake of political work we have to repress ourselves. This has been a common practice in political movements in the past. But it is one that produces constantly dissatisfied individuals. Again, what we do may lead to suffering, but this may be preferable to the kind of self-destruction we would have faced had we remained inactive.

The inability to make politics a rewarding experience is part of the reason why, I think, the radical Left has been unsuccessful in attracting large numbers of people. Here too we are beginning to learn however. I see that many young militants today are recognizing the importance of building community, of organizing activities that are pleasurable, that build trust and affective relations, like eating together for instance. It is not an accident that Indigenous peoples’ movements in Latin America give so much importance to the organization of events like the fiestas.

Nick and carla: We wanted to ask you specifically about the feminist movement and what are some of the ways that feminists and other movements have struggled with sad militancy in the past. We’re thinking of Jo Freeman’s essay on “trashing” from the ‘70s, where she talks about real tendencies to destroy relationships within the feminist movement.[i] In one of the interviews that you’ve done, you mention “truculent forms of behavior that were typical of the movement in the ‘60s” and that you see new forms of kindness and care emerging that maybe were absent back then. So we wanted to ask you about how things have changed from your perspective, and whether you see a connection between trashing and what is now called call-out culture in contemporary movements.

Federici: When I wrote about truculent behavior, I was thinking of relations in the male Left and male-dominated organizations, where you found a lot of protagonism and peacock-like competition, as well as a manipulation of women, sexual and otherwise. These were among the factors that motivated the rise of the women’s liberation movement. Not only women’s demands were pushed off the agenda, but everyday relations were often degrading for them.

A good description of women’s lives in male-dominated organizations is Marge Piercy’s The Grand Coolie Dam,[ii] where she powerfully describes the many forms of subordination women suffered in male-dominated groups. In comparison, the organizational forms the women’s movement adopted were a major improvement. Possibly feminists moved too far in the opposite direction. I am thinking of Jo Freeman’s critique of the “tyranny of structurelessness.”[iii] But she’s excessively critical of the feminist movement. I don’t agree that feminists were especially prone to trashing each other. The attack on leadership, for instance, though it often worked against people’s capacity to express themselves, also opened the way to more egalitarian relations—like ensuring that everyone would have a change to speak in a meeting. The resistance against women getting credit for authoring articles or speaking too much in public was a legacy of the experiences we had made in male-dominated organizations. In time, it is a fear that most women left behind, as they felt more confident in their own powers.

“The problem has been the wedding of “identity” with the politics of rights, as when we speak of women’s rights, Indigenous peoples’ rights, as if each group were entitled to a packet of entitlements, but in isolation from each other, so that we lose sight of the commonalities and the possibility of a common struggle.”

Some of the bitterness that you find in Jo Freeman comes perhaps from the fact that, when we joined the women’s movement, many of us believed that we had reached a sort of paradise. As I wrote in Putting Feminism On Its Feet, when I began to work with other women I truly felt that I had found my home, my tribe.[iv] We thought that we had reached a place where everything would be harmonious; where there would be love, care, reciprocity, equality, cooperation—sisterhood as we called it. So we dis-activated our critical thinking and left our defenses down. Unfortunately, we didn’t reach paradise, and the disappointment was especially severe because we assumed that in the women’s movement we would find happiness, or at least we would not encounter the kind of jealousies, power plays, and power relations we had experienced with men.

Spinoza speaks of Joy as coming from Reason and Understanding. But we forgot that all of us bear on our bodies and minds the marks of life in a capitalist society. We forgot that we came to the feminist movement with many scars and fears. We would feel devalued and easily take offense if we thought we were not properly valued. It was a jealousy that came from poverty, from fear of not being given our due. This also led some women to be possessive about what they had done, what they had written or said.

These are all the classical problems and distortions that life in a capitalist society creates. Over time you learn to identify them, but at first, many of us were devastated by them. For me coping with this realization has been an important learning process. But I have also seen women leaving the movement because they were so deeply hurt by it.

On the other hand, the feminist movement, because it stressed the importance of sharing experiences and engaging in a collective examination of our everyday lives and problems, gave us important tools to deal with this situation. Through “consciousness-raising” and the refusal to separate politics from our everyday reproduction it created forms of organization that built trust and showed that our strength was rooted in our mutual solidarity.

I found a vision in the women’s movement that allowed me to overcome some bitter experiences and over time insulated me from disappointment. I see politics now as a process of transformation; a process by which we learn to better ourselves, shed our possessiveness and discard the petty squabbles that so much poison our lives.

I think that this has been a collective experience that has left a mark on other organizations as well. It seems to me that, over the last two or three decades, the women’s movement has been the most important influence on the organizational forms of most radical movements. You don’t find today, on a general level, the kind of behavior that was common among men thirty or forty years ago, not at least among the new generations, although there is still a good amount of machismo around. But you also have men who genuinely want to be feminist, and define themselves as anti-patriarchal, or organize against male supremacy—all unthinkable stands—with few exceptions—in the ‘60s.

carla: I have all these questions! There seems to be some kind of paradox in this: that joy is about feelings and relationships, but not just an individual feeling. And while we want to speak to the power of joy, it can’t be turned into a commandment, and in fact it gets lost when it becomes something imposed on people. But it also can’t be about just feeling happy or feeling good, or being okay with the way things are. It feels like a little bit of a paradox and I haven’t figured out how to think that through. A lot of my activism over the years has been around youth liberation and working with children having more of a say, and getting that form of oppression into the discussion and into activist spaces, and my work was very centered around that in a public way. I don’t want to replicate individualism in liberation; I want it to always be connected to the larger systems and social struggles. But it also needs to be about thriving right now, because they’re kids! And when things were working well it seemed that there was a lot of room for freedom and growth but it was held and felt collectively, without a bunch of rules or norms. There was happiness, sure, but also difficulty and a willingness to work through it. So it feels like a constant paradox to work through joy …

Federici: I like the distinction between happiness and joy. Like you, I like joy because it is an active passion. It’s not a static state of being. And it’s not satisfaction with things as they are. It’s part of feeling powers and capacities growing within yourself and in the people around you. It’s a feeling, a passion that comes from a process of transformation and growth. It does not mean that you’re satisfied with your situation. It means, again using Spinoza, that you’re active in accordance to what your understanding tells you to do and what is required by the situation. So you feel that you have the power to change and feel yourself changing through what you’re doing, together with other people. It’s not a form of acquiescence to what exists.

Nick and carla: We’ve found your concept of the accumulation of divisions really compelling, and the ways you’re centering how capitalism is always using white supremacy, patriarchy, colonization, and other oppressive hierarchies to create divisions and enable exploitation. Your historicization of those divisions is powerful, because you show how the state and capitalism have deepened and entrenched patriarchy and racism as a strategy to stop resistance and enable more intense exploitation. And for us, in this book we really want to center the importance of rebuilding trust and connection and solidarity across those divisions, while leaving space for difference and autonomy. One of the things that we like about your work is that you don’t jump to a simple unity—that overcoming these divisions doesn’t look like a simple unity. And so we wanted to ask you to talk about that a little more. Is there a distinction between divisions, which are hierarchical and exploitative, and differences, which might be something else? And can you talk about the positive horizon you see for resisting the accumulation of divisions while warding off a kind of homogenizing unity?

Federici: Yes, the distinction between differences and divisions is important. When I speak of “divisions” I speak of differences that carry hierarchies, inequalities, and have a divisive power. So, we need to be very clear when we speak of “differences.” Not all should be celebrated.

The lesson we learned in the ‘60s from the women’s movement and the Black Power movement is that the most effective way to respond to unequal relations is for those who have less social power to organize autonomously. This does not exclude the possibility of coming together for particular struggles. But in a society divided along racial and gender lines, unity is a goal to be achieved, not something that can be assumed to already exist. Organizational autonomy, or at least the construction of autonomous spaces within mixed organizations—as it often happens in Latin America—is a necessary condition to subvert these divisions. The women’s movement could not have developed the understanding of the situation of women that it developed if women had remained in male-dominated organizations. It was crucial for women to move away from these organizations to even begin to think about their problems and share their thoughts with each other.

You cannot think of a problem, give voice to it, share it with others, if you fear that you will be dismissed, ridiculed, or told that it is not important. Moreover, how could women have spoken of sexuality and their relations with men in front of them? And how could Black militants speak openly of their experience of racism in front of white people?

Autonomy within movements that are working toward unity but are traversed by power relations is fundamental. A crucial reality would have remained hidden if the feminist movement had not organized autonomously and this is also true of the Black Power movement. Important areas and forms of exploitation would have continued to be unnoticed; would not have been analyzed and denounced and would have continued to be reproduced.

carla and Nick: You often point to Latin America and other places where the social fabric is much stronger in general, and movements are a lot more capable of reproducing themselves and meeting their own needs, relying less on the state and capital. The maintenance of communal and cooperative forms of life seems to be central to the capacity for sustained struggle and resistance. Can you elaborate on all this?

Federici: I went to Nigeria in the ‘80s and one of the big surprises for me was to discover that large amounts of land were still managed communally. That doesn’t mean that in communal land regimes relationships are necessarily egalitarian. Generally men have more power than women; but until recently they could not sell the land. Clearly these communal regimes have gone through many changes, especially because of colonial domination. But the fact that communal ownership has been widespread in Africa until at least the nineteenth century and, in some regions, continues even today, has had a deep impact on relationships and people, which is why I believe so much violence has been and is necessary to privatize the land and the continent’s immense natural resources.

It’s the same thing in Latin America. In Mexico, in the 1930s, during the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, some land was returned to indigenous communities that had been expropriated by colonial invasion. Today the Mexican government is trying to re-privatize everything, but until recently at least thirty percent of the country’s land was still held communally.

Again, this is not a guarantee of egalitarian relations. Women in these communities are coming forward, criticizing the patriarchal relations often prevailing within them. A good example are the Zapatista women. As you can read in Hilary Klein’s book Compañeras, many of the transformations that have taken place in Zapatista communities, like the application of the Revolutionary Law On Women, have been the product of the struggle that women have made against patriarchalism. But communal land regimes guarantee the reproduction of the communities that live on the land.

Today many of these communities are facing dispossession because of land privatization, deforestation, the loss of water to irrigate their milpas. But when they are forced out and come to the cities, they still act as a collectivity. They take over land though collective action, they build encampments, and take decision collectively. As a result, in many cities of Latin America, new communities have formed that from their beginning were built collectively. It appears that the narcos now try to infiltrate some of these communities. But when people take over the land and cooperate to build their houses, to build the streets, to fight with the government to connect the electricity and get water pipes, there is a good chance that that they will be able to respond to this threat, and you can see that there’s a new social reality emerging in these communities.

As Raúl Zibechi often points out, something new is emerging in these communities because they have had to invent new forms of life, without any pre-existing model, and politicize the everyday process of their reproduction.[v] When you work together, building houses, building streets, building structures that provide some immediate form of healthcare—just to give some examples—you are making life-choices, as all of them come with a high cost. You must fight the state, fight the police, the local authorities. So you have to develop tight relations with each other and always measure the value of all things.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/17/feeling-powers-growing/feed/08th AMENDMENT REFERENDUMhttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/04/8th-amendment-referendum/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/04/8th-amendment-referendum/#commentsMon, 04 Jun 2018 21:28:29 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12508We are posting the following article from Socialist Democracy (Ireland) on the victory over the forces of the traditionalist Right in the 8th Amendment referendum on abortion in Ireland.

CATHOLIC CHURCH KNOCKED DOWN BY REPEAL VOTE –

BUT THE IRISH STATE DODGES THE BULLET

The success of the referendum to repeal the 8th Amendment of the Irish Constitution and legislation for abortion reform produced a deafening hurrah that should echo to all corners of the planet. The result is a body blow to the Catholic Church and to the reactionary church-state counter-revolution established following the Irish Civil War.

As with the marriage equality referendum of 2015, the vote on article eight reflected widespread outrage at the many historical crimes of the Church against Irish women and the Irish working class and the role of the state in enabling those crimes and protecting the church when they were exposed. The mass graves of the Mother and Baby Homes, the kidnapping and torture of the Magdalene Laundries, the servitude of the Industrial Schools and the widespread physical and sexual abuse are remembered with rage and contempt.

The marriage equality referendum was a slap in the teeth for the Church but, while they were to the fore in all forms of sexual repression outside of their own criminal acts against children, it was not the repression of the LGBT community that was their central activity, but the repression of women and the poor. The repeal of the 8th is a punch in the guts that has knocked the Church down and is the biggest blow they have suffered since the foundation of the state. However we are still far from a knockout punch that will deliver a secular society in Ireland.

Citizens Assembly and Fine Gael

It is worth reviewing how we arrived at the referendum. The Fine Gael government, unwilling to deal with an abortion referendum, kicked the can down the road by setting up an assembly of 100 citizens chosen at random to consider the question. Much to the government’s astonishment, a majority of the Citizens Assembly came out in favour of liberalisation, with many expressing support for the right to choose.

That report opened up the present situation. On the one hand you had a spontaneous mobilization in support of women and against church dictats and on the other an alliance of church and state scrambling for balance and ways to protect their position. The intensity of feeling was best expressed by the influx of émigrés to cast their vote and magnified by a number of attempts to legislate within the current constitution –attempts that always ended in scandal, death or the carving up of women. The repressive Catholic Ireland exported its youth to other lands and they were home to have their revenge.

The government produced heads of agreement that outlined a potential liberalisation scenario but did not prepare legislation, parking the issue until the referendum was held. The struggle we are in is between a spontaneous mobilisation and an alliance of the Church and State – one which is in retreat but which is highly organised, very aware of its class interest and has the discipline to stage a strategic retreat that will preserve as much as possible in the hope of better days to come.

None of the major parties were willing to confront the new public mood and politicians with a lifetime of opposition to abortion rights came out in favour of repeal of the 8th amendment. The Church brought the opposition into the schools (facing significant opposition from some parents and children) and had them address church congregations but did not lead a mobilization itself. The battle to save the 8th fell to the auxiliaries of the Catholic right, with the establishment either neutral or already conceding the ground. These right-wingers were so extreme, with their bloody foetus photographs and denunciation of reformers as murderers, that they almost certainly swelled the vote for repeal.

Coalition

The vast majority of activists, almost without discussion, settled on a single issue – repeal – and organised in a loose coalition as was the case with equal marriage and the water charges campaign. The campaign ended in a landslide for repeal.

However the narrowing of the issue simply to repeal left the political parties free to avoid a deeper examination of their attitude to women’s rights overall. The political system has been thrown into confusion without a more general clarification.

The size of the rejection of the Church is simply stunning. Ninety percent of the youth, graduates of an education system that the Church controls, reject them not only on this issue but across the board in rejection of their general dogma. On the other hand the church-state alliance has a strong hand. David Begg, a former leader of the Irish trade unions, was thrown in front of RTE cameras to call for a no vote in place of the trade union campaign calling for yes. Begg’s strand of fervent Catholicism is shared by many in the leadership of RTE, education, health, the police, and many other sectors. Members of organizations such as Opus Dei and the Knights of Columbanus act as the eyes and ears of the church and intervene on its behalf. These Catholic societies operate in a state with limited democracy. Local government finance is controlled by unelected city managers who move back and forward between councils, semi-state bodies and privatised industries.

In any case the overall economy still operates under the regulations set by the Troika of EU, ECB and IMF. A key battleground now is health. The main maternity hospital is in the hands of the Church and last year the government handed over the new maternity hospital to St Vincent’s Hospital Group. The new governing board will be require to uphold the] ”values and vision” of the religious order behind St Vincent’s. That order is the Sisters of Charity, the order behind Magdalene Laundries and the industrial schools, the order that fought against compensation for their victims and the order that has still paid little in recompense. The government does not have the finance to run a health service because of levels of sovereign debt and is in any case prevented by EU rules from putting in the necessary funds. Privatisation will continue apace and the Church, now standing behind private companies, will play a big role in providing resources in return for applying its dogma either openly or behind the scenes.

However the political landscape has changed. As a result of the referendum the reformist socialist groups have done well. Basing the campaign in constituency areas has made their candidates more visible. However, given that the “united” left ran separate campaigns, the prospects of a new party seem slim. It is worth mentioning as a new factor the emergence of new republican voices, especially the group eirigi, who came out wholeheartedly for the right to choose. A recognition of the dependent nature of the Irish state and the role of imperialism is an important element in longer term struggles for women’s and democratic rights.

On the right, the Labour Party have seen a recovery following widespread rejection of their role in the last coalition government and their drive to jail water charge protestors. Fianna Fail, the traditional nationalist populist party, despite quick footwork by Micheál Martin, came out badly following a rebellion by rural TDs. A slow recovery in their fortunes has been thrown back to the advantage of Sinn Fein, who managed to put themselves to the fore on repeal without anyone knowing what their position on the current proposals now is. At the moment they support only the most restrictive conditions for abortion and have to decide on the proposal for a 12 week window. However the major winners are the right-wing Fine Gael party. They had already embarked on an Obama style strategy with the election of Leo Varadkar, a gay man of Indian descent, positioning themselves as on the economic right but socially liberal. Simon Harris, the Fine Gael health minister, is now being presented as the hero of the campaign despite yet another health scandal where women are dying because a policy of health outsourcing led to a failure of cervical screening and being the minister responsible for the handover of the new maternity hospital to the church. Another minister has just announced a new scandal involving false adoption papers arising from the past church market in handing over children of unmarried mothers to the faithful able to make a substantial donation.

The scene shifts

The scene now shifts to the Dail and to new legislation. Already the government is less enthusiastic, saying that they will now begin to draw up new legislation and that it might not be ready this year. Did they not know that there was a referendum? They do have heads of agreement on which legislation will be based, but these are quite limited. Given the size of the vote it seems impossible that the 12-week window for abortion will be sabotaged, but access involves permission by a GP and after twelve weeks the proposals are very restrictive and involve a high degree of clerical control inside the hospitals. The proposed bill is also likely to include a freedom of conscience clause for the medical profession. The issue now moves to very hostile territory. In parliament there are few genuine defenders of women’s rights. Sections of the medical profession have been liberated by the referendum, including many GPs and obstetricians, but they will still be operating in an environment largely controlled by the Church. The referendum is a great gain, but there is much to do in securing rights and in turning the spotlight on clerical control in the health sector and in education. During the referendum the repeal movement was at every stage involved in the issues that would face women. In the meetings, on the doorsteps and in training sessions the duration of the initial abortion window, the nature of the legislation and the proposed restrictions were discussed continuously. This will prove extremely valuable in further struggles. However the overall movement was based only on the policy of repeal, so the task of building a further resistance is before us.

The focus will now move North, a centre of reaction on this issue as on many others. Not only is abortion illegal in almost any circumstances, members of the state forces, encouraged by the DUP, have brought charges against women for buying abortifacients online. There will be tremendous pressure for change but the DUP will not bend. Sinn Fein are happy to glow in a progressive shine from the South but will not want to antagonise their more conservative rural supporters in the North. Michelle O’Neill has announced a policy that remained limited to hard cases and is still awaiting endorsement of the 12 week window proposed in the South. In the absence of an administration Westminster holds the reins of power but Theresa May will protect the DUP and the Tory right while holding to the pretence that the North is still a going concern and refusing to accept that it is directly ruled by Westminster. A new campaign would have to face up to the lack of democratic credentials in the northern system. Up and running, a sectarian veto in the Assembly would hold the right to choose at bay even if a majority supported it. Without an Assembly we are at the mercy of a colonial administration that will not even admit that there is a period of direct rule and that they have absolute responsibility for democratic rights. Appeals to May’s claim to feminist credentials have failed, so further movement would need a labour mobilisation on the issue and this would be far more likely if there was an organised campaign involving all the forces for women’s rights in both parts of Ireland.

A major long-term effect of the Irish referendum vote will be on the global stage. A tide of reaction, led by the US evangelicals, has led to restrictions on women’s rights. The fall of Ireland, the jewel in the crown of Catholic reaction, will pause the offensive and encourage a fightback by pro-choice forces.

Leftists have not been slow to claim the power of constituency lobbying in winning the referendum majority. Yet 75% of voters say that they had made their mind up before the referendum was called and only 12% said they decided during the campaign. At the end of the day change has come about because the Irish economy and society have changed. A confessional society designed to rule impoverished small farmers is not suited to the globalised economy of today. Transnational companies have many faults, but asking the local priest to bless their enterprise is not usually one of them. Today’s Ireland still exports its youth, but twice now the émigrés have returned to vote and have their revenge.

Victory

The methods of organisation adopted over the past decade in Ireland, after many failures, have had a spectacular victory. Yet they have been crippled by many weaknesses. The appearance of David Begg on RTE to advocate no led to widespread complaint, yet Begg was the architect of a policy of social partnership that saw the trade union leadership join in supporting the banking guarantee and accepting a decade of austerity – an austerity that had, by the trade unions own admission, a savage effect on woman worker‘s wages and saw health and social services aimed at women decimated. Throughout that period he faced almost no criticism as many activists accepted the argument that a broad front to ameliorate aspects of the austerity involved avoiding challenge to the union leaders.

Respect the referendum!

Now that strategy has a victory, but it has also reached a limit. Repeal has been established, but that means the end of the single-issue campaign. The confessional state will push back and we need to preserve the mobilisation. The immediate aim should be to bring together activists around the themes: “Respect the referendum! Support the right to choose! A new movement advocating democratic rights for women must itself be democratic and allow women to build democratic structures and decide their own fate. Immediate tasks will involve winning the battle in the North while preventing delay and dilution of the referendum call in the South. We should also recognise that the almost universal rejection of the status quo by youth does not stop at women’s rights. The suffering of the austerity decade ran deep and there is a deep anger at an economic model that leaves so many in poverty.

Social change has brought political change and capitalist society is adapting. Marxists argue that that adaptation will stop short of a full right to choose, that the final liberation of women is tied up with the overall liberation of the working class and that here and now it involves building a party that represents the working class.

However before attempting further tasks we should spare a thought for the generations of victims: The dead babies stuffed in sewers. The young mothers in servitude, the boy brutalised in the industrial schools. The victims of clerical rape and the pregnant women in hospital: those mutilated by surgical procedures dictated by religious dogma and pregnant women who suddenly realize that their life counts for nothing in the case of an emergency.

We should savour a moment of unalloyed joy. St. Patrick has taken a terrible belt on the mitre. He will be many a day recovering.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/04/8th-amendment-referendum/feed/2THE STRUGGLE FOR A CATALAN REPUBLIChttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/04/the-struggle-for-a-catalan-republic/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/04/the-struggle-for-a-catalan-republic/#commentsMon, 04 Jun 2018 21:02:39 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12497We are posting two items on the situation in Catalunya. The first is from Eric Chester who recently visited Barcelona. The second is the motion put forward to the SSP’s National Council in May by the Dundee branch.

1. REPORT FROM BARCELONA

Popular Unity Candidacy, Catalunya

Barcelona has once again become a center of radical politics. After decades of brutal repression under Franco, the Left has returned and the city is alive with political activity. Of course, the Left of 2018 is not the same Left that controlled Barcelona during the first months of the Spanish Civil War.

The Struggle for Independence

Media coverage of the situation in Catalonia has focused on the struggle for independence. There is no doubt that this has become a bitter confrontation. Those who support independence point out that there had been an agreement under which Catalonia was granted considerable autonomy. Yet when the Catalonian parliament approved progressive legislation, such as a ban on fracking and an end to bull fighting, as well as the levying of taxes targeting the affluent, the Spanish Constitutional Court stepped in to nullify the legislation. It was this decision that fuelled the upsurge in support for independence.

Nevertheless, popular opinion remains split on the issue, with a substantial segment of the populace continuing to hold the belief that Catalonia should remain a region within Spain. In this context, the push for independence has reached a stalemate, as Spanish courts continue to arrest and detain independence leaders on the charge of sedition. The lack of unity in popular opinion has prevented the supporters of independence from organizing the mass protests, occupations and general strikes that would be required to force the Spanish government to accept a binding referendum.

For now, the broad coalition supporting independence has shifted the focus of its efforts to a defense of democratic rights. Signs calling for the freeing of political prisoners can be seen everywhere in Barcelona. A cluster of tents in the main square has been erected as a symbolic occupation in support of those being held in jail. Whatever one’s position on Catalonian independence, there can be no justification for the dictatorial acts of the Spanish government. Furthermore, the people of Catalonia have the right to determine for themselves whether they should remain a part of Spain or form an independent state.

International Women’s Day

Yet the struggle for independence is only one of several movements that are able to mobilize huge numbers of protestors. These demonstrations are able to bridge the divide arising for the call for independence. We arrived in Barcelona a few days after International Women’s Day, March 8. On that day, a rally brought 500,000 people on to the streets of Barcelona. Men were encouraged to bring their children, thus assuming parental responsibility. Throughout Catalonia, even in small towns, there were similar rallies on March 8. Indeed, International Women’s Day was celebrated by mass rallies in much of Spain.

The protests in Barcelona were coordinated by a network of grass-roots community based feminist organizations. While organizing the march and rally, feminist organizations began calling for a one day general strike. Both of the anarchist unions, the CGT and the CNT, were supportive, but the two largest unions, the UGT and the CCOO, were uncooperative. Finally, under pressure from their women members, both of the mainstream unions agreed to support a two-hour general strike on March 8, a considerable victory for grass-roots activists.

The Broader Movement

Political activity takes many forms in Barcelona. During our time there, tens of thousands demonstrated in opposition to a cost of living increase for pensioners that fell far short of the rate of inflation. These protests reflected the enormous popular discontent with the drastic austerity measures imposed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in the wake of the global collapse of a decade ago.

While the economy sputters, housing prices in Barcelona continue to soar. In part, this has resulted from the many tourists flocking to the city. In addition, neighborhoods in the city center have been gentrified as the very wealthy opt to own an apartment in this ancient and beautiful metropolis. Most of these flats remain unoccupied for much of the year as working people find themselves crammed into less and less space. Community organizations have mobilized to oppose gentrification and anarchist groups have been active in blocking evictions. Signs declaring that Barcelona can not be bought are highly visible in the contested neighborhoods.

A Radical Party Arises

Barcelona is a city with a revolutionary past and a radical present. It is a place of ferment where new ideas are welcomed and conservative traditions no longer hold sway. From this mix of social movements, a new political party has emerged, the Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP), bringing together activists from a range of political backgrounds, both socialist and anarchist.

CUP developed out of grass-roots community organizations that first presented candidates at a municipal level. Since 2012, it has fielded candidates for the Catalonian legislature. At the last election in 2017, the party received 4.5% of the total vote and elected four of its members to the Catalonian parliament. Still, the CUP continues to uphold one of its core values by functioning as a decentralized organization in which a great deal of power remains at the local level. Electoral politics remains a secondary concern to movement building in communities and at the workplace.

General policy guidelines for the CUP for Catalonia are set every six months at an assembly in which every active member can vote. Currently, there are two thousand members who are active at the local level, most of whom participate at the assembly level.

The CUP is committed to a socialist feminist perspective and it works hard to ensure that women fully participate in the party. As a result, the percentage of women in the party has doubled, increasing from about twenty percent of the total membership to nearly forty percent. Of course, CUP women were active in organizing the International Women’s Day demonstration and pushing for a general strike that day, but the commitment to feminism goes beyond this. There are strict term limits on those holding office and the party makes sure women are fully represented among those authorized to speak to the media. Furthermore, CUP members in the Catalonian parliament are held strictly accountable to the party’s guidelines as determined by a democratic process.

CUP views itself as a party committed to a set of principles grounded in the need for a revolutionary transformation of society. For this to be more than rhetoric, the organization needs to formulate a program that pushes the limits of the possible within a global capitalist system. CUP calls for an independent Catalonia that will be independent of the European Union and NATO. It also stands for the repudiation of enormous government debt incurred during the economic collapse of the last decade. CUP would also bring the banks into the public sector without any compensation, pointing to the vast subsidies given the financial sector during the crash. These demands are the start of a transitional program, although one that needs further development before it can provide the basis for a socialist transformation of society.

During the last year, the CUP has worked within a parliamentary coalition with the two larger, mainstream pro-independence parties. At the same time, the CUP sought to pursue its own socialist agenda. Obviously there is a tension between these two strategies. Recently the party has openly broken with the independence bloc by refusing to support a joint candidate for president of Catalonia. In doing so, the CUP stated clearly that it would focus its energies on building grass-roots movements for fundamental change and would not limit its efforts to support for a broad coalition demanding the restoration of basic civil liberties.

The CUP has its problems but nevertheless it provides an interesting model for anti-authoritarian leftists in the more economically developed countries. It proves that a viable organization of radicals can be built in a post-industrial society. While linking itself to the past, especially the inspiring examples of worker self-management created during the Spanish Civil War, the CUP understands that it needs to take into account the distinctive consciousness of the current period.

Socialism can not be built in one country, but rather it requires a revolutionary movement that crosses national boundaries. The CUP needs to strengthen its ties to groups with a similar perspective in Europe and throughout the world. Perhaps this time the radical Left can build an international that is not dominated by one organization, but instead acts as a true federation of organizations committed to a common goal, the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society.

Eric Chester, 24.5.18

2. DUNDEE SSP MOTION ON CATALONIA TO THE MAY NATIONAL COUNCIL

This National Council welcomes the involvement of SSP members in a wide range of actions anddiscussions focussed on the political situation in Catalonia, including the participation of SSP members in a delegation to Catalonia in October 2017; the consistent reports published in the Scottish Socialist Voice by Dick Nichols, the Barcelona-based European correspondent for Green Left Weekly and Links journal;

the visible SSP presence and speakers at solidarity rallies in cities across Scotland;

and a number of successful SSP public meetings on the subject, including the well-attended fringe meeting at the SNP conference in Glasgow.

Furthermore, this National Council considers:

i) That the crisis in Catalonia merits serious consideration by socialists internationally because of the critical questions it raises around the nature of sovereignty, nationalism, mass movements and power, many of which have particular significance in Scotland;

ii) That the demand for the Catalan Republic, supported by over two million Catalan people in the 2017 referendum, poses what is currently the most immediate threat to the Spanish political system established in 1978 during the ‘transition to democracy’ (the “1978 regime”);

iii) That the 1978 regime was built on an agreement between the major Spanish parties onimpunity for those responsible for the crimes of the Franco dictatorship, rejection of the right of nations to self-determination, and the restoration of the Spanish monarchy, and that, regardless of the conditions in which that agreement was struck, the bringing down of the 1978 regime is therefore a legitimate and progressive aspiration in modern-day Catalonia;

iv) That support for Catalan independence has grown in large part among working class and young Catalans because of their disillusionment with the ability of the Spanish state and the1978 regime to realise their aspiration for greater national and economic rights, both of which have been undermined by Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy in his opposition to the 2006 Statute of Autonomy and in his continued imposition of austerity across the Spanish state;

v) That the Catalan movement has been increasingly radicalised as a consequence of repression from the Spanish state, as seen in the massive mobilisation of working class Catalans in a general strike on 3 October 2017, described by Ignasi Bernat as “the first large-scale workers’ strike against state repression in Europe for over 40 years”, which introduced the working class as a political actor into the Catalan independence movement;

vi) That the events following the October 2017 referendum and general strike are distinguished by an increasing degree of conflict between the more radical left wing of the Catalan movement (concentrated in the grassroots) and its more moderate right wing (concentrated in leadership positions, represented by the likes of Catalan President Carles Puigdemont);

vii) That this conflict ultimately led to the Catalan government’s reluctant unilateral declaration of independence, demanded by the grassroots movement after Puigdemont was outmanoeuvred by the Spanish government, and the subsequent invocation of Article 155, which the timid Puigdemont government was not prepared to meaningfully resist;

viii) That this conflict represents not only a clash of ideas and opposing strategies, but is also a reflection of the class struggle within the Catalan independence movement, with the militant section of the movement reflecting the aspiration of working class Catalans to break decisively from the Spanish state and the moderate section of the movement reflecting the aspirations and economic interests of the Catalan middle-class and business owners;

ix) That only the use of mass demonstrations, strikes, direct action and open defiance of the Spanish Constitution, made possible by a high level of sustained organising at a local community level, has delivered significant advance for the Catalan movement, and the meaningful realisation of the Catalan Republic relies on the continued use of these tactics;

x) That the outcome of the current crisis is of great interest for the whole of the European left, in which the question of how to win, retain and effectively utilise political power in favour of the working class remains strongly contested and unanswered, particularly following the capitulation of the Greek government of Alexis Tsipras and his SYRIZA party;

xi) That the project of establishing the Catalan Republic on a progressive basis, breaking decisively from the 1978 regime and the politics of neoliberalism, has the potential to inspire and rally working class people in other countries around similar demands — not least in Scotland, where the independence movement has failed to make meaningful advance under the cautious and conservative leadership of Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP, whose position on EU membership has been partly discredited among their base of supporters following the European Commission’s acceptance of Spanish state repression;

xii) And that, while it is ultimately up to the people of Catalonia to determine their future, socialists internationally have a political and moral imperative to offer political and practical support to the Catalan pro-independence left in their pursuit of this immediate goal. This being the case, this National Council affirms:

1. That the SSP EC was right to extend support to the Catalan Defence Committee Scotland (CDCS), should encourage SSP members to get involved with its solidarity work, and should urge the CDCS to introduce a democratic, accountable and transparent national decision-making structure as soon as is practicably possible;

2. That the SSP should continue to develop and share publicly a socialist perspective on events in Catalonia, in particular aiming to distil the lessons that can be applied in Scotland from theexperience of pro-independence left activists in organisations like the CUP;

3. And that the SSP should aim to develop a positive and constructive relationship with Catalan pro-independence socialists and anti-capitalists, including by extending an invitation to a CUP representative to participate in the SSP’s 2018 conference.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/04/the-struggle-for-a-catalan-republic/feed/1THE ROYAL WEDDING – PROVIDING POLITICAL COVER FOR THE UK STATE’S CROWN POWERShttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/04/the-royal-wedding/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/04/the-royal-wedding/#respondMon, 04 Jun 2018 20:30:31 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12495This is an edited version the article, written by Eddie Ford, which first appeared in Weekly Worker. This blog has often warned how the use of the Crown Powers could stymie any attempt to set-up an independent Scotland. This article provides a warning to those who look to Jeremy Corbyn to lead a new Labour government. Under the Crown Powers the British establishment can call on the monarch to appoint an alternative Prime Minister.

THE ROYAL WEDDING – PROVIDING POLITICAL COVER FOR THE UK STATE’S

CROWN POWERS

Jeremy Corbyn- a genuine or a platonic republican?

Although politicians might not have been invited to the royal wedding on May 19th at Windsor, this was definitely a political event. Its purpose was to demonstrate once again the central ideological role of the monarchy – which, as we all know, stands ‘above politics’, so that it can serve the common interests of the ‘entire nation’, whatever your class position, as opposed to outsiders. No doubt this is part of the reason why Markle must become British herself.

Communists insist that the republican question cannot be ducked or avoided – quite the opposite in fact. We know that the leader of the official opposition – one Jeremy Bernard Corbyn – is on record as criticising not just the cost of royal occasions, but the fact of them. In the past he has shown his disapproval of the whole monarchical system, not just the ‘excessive cost’ of this or that event.

Or at least that certainly used to be Corbyn’s position. Back in 1995 he seconded the Commonwealth of Britain Bill brought forward by Tony Benn, which called for the transformation of the UK into a “democratic, federal and secular Commonwealth of Britain”, with an elected president, devolution and abolition of the House of Lords (1). Almost enough to provoke an army revolt. At other times, Corbyn has merely talked about abolishing (or weakening) the queen’s royal prerogative – which he rightly described at a leadership hustings as a “very convenient way of bypassing parliament”. For the Jeremy Corbyn of just a few years ago, the royal prerogative should be “subject to parliamentary vote and veto if necessary”.

Yet nowadays we never hear even the latter sentiments coming from the lips of the Labour leader: whatever happened to the real Jeremy Corbyn? But frankly it would have beeen good and healthy if he had made it clear he would not be joining in the celebrations and had no intention of giving his own stamp of legitimacy to a thoroughly reactionary institution. Rather than shilly-shallying around, Corbyn should have used the occasion to put forward a series of democratic demands, including, of course, the abolition of the monarchy.

At the TUC ‘new deal for working people’ demonstration last weekend, Corbyn talked a lot about the Labour government doing all sorts of marvellous things. But in order to get into ‘power’ – using that term in the everyday sense – Corbyn has got to win a general election on one level or another: either by being able to command a majority in parliament or at least by heading the biggest party in terms of the number of MPs. However, according to constitutional convention, it is the monarch (acting on the advice of the privy council) who invites to Buckingham Palace a person likely to be able to form a government. But there is no constitutional requirement that it must be the leader of the largest party represented in parliament.

Though most of the left seems to think it is an amusing eccentricity on the part of the Weekly Worker, this publication has pointed out that the chances of Jeremy Corbyn being invited to the palace are rather less than certain in the middle of a hard Brexit not to the liking of the bankers, the City, state bureaucracy, civil service, Financial Times, etc (or no deal at all). After all, he is clearly less than enthusiastic about Nato and Trident and cannot be regarded as a trustworthy ally of the US, if and when it launches its next military adventure in, say, the Middle East.

Under these circumstances, it is more than possible that, far from Lizzie asking Jez over to the palace for Earl Grey tea and cucumber sandwiches, she will invite someone else instead – say, that nice, clean-cut Sir Keir Starmer (as it happens, a former Pabloite (2). Remember, no fewer than 172 Labour MPs signed a no-confidence motion against the Labour leader less than two years ago – talk about the enemy within. Following the next general election, unless there is some near miraculous transformation of the Parliamentary Labour Party, it will be MPs of the same political complexion standing behind the seemingly triumphant Jeremy Corbyn. The queen, or her heir, could well give the Nato-hating, IRA-loving, pro-Russian Corbyn a wide miss and rather give her blessing to the likes of the now impeccably mainstream Starmer – he would never let a hard Brexit happen and could well command not just majority support from Labour MPs, but potentially more besides. Perhaps he might even form a national government to rescue Britain from the hard Brexiteers. Bye, bye Jeremy.

It is more than worthwhile pointing out that in the past monarchs have chosen someone who is precisely not the leader of the biggest party or majority party – that is perfectly legitimate under the British constitutional-monarchical system, even if it is rather unusual. Anyone who says this would provoke a revolution is living in a fantasy world. Sure, it might cause a few demonstrations organised by the usual suspects – but so what?

In fact, the left urgently needs a lesson on what a revolutionary situation exactly is and what you need to make a revolution in the first place. Revolutions do not happen because a lot of people are unhappy or have gone on so many marches – there needs to be a split within the ruling class and, crucially, the army. Furthermore, logically, for there to be an actual revolution – rather than a counterrevolution or quick relapse to the status quo – there needs to be an independent working class party armed with an internationalist programme for revolution that has mass support amongst the population. If Keir Starmer, or whoever, was asked to form a government instead of Jeremy Corbyn, that would not act as a catalyst for revolution or insurrection. Indeed, given the situation and mood today, such a measure might well meet with wide approval. When asked by various polls, most people tend to agree with the sentiment that politicians should stop all this silly party-bickering and, instead, work together in the national interest.

There is also the historical example of Ramsay MacDonald, who could not get his Labour cabinet to back his austerity programme, but at the initiative of George V, formed a national government with the Tories and Liberals. He then called a general election which virtually wiped out the Labour Party in the House of Commons. Given that we are not living under normal circumstances, but the rather dysfunctional state of affairs provoked by the Brexit referendum, it would be foolish to rule out a comparable scenario. Today’s Corbyn-led Labour Party could be decimated by a cross-party coalition (even if its popular vote did not fall). Of course, for Labour MPs that went with a cross-party coalition political death would soon come. At the next general election it would be they, the Labour traitors who would be decimated. They would then have to trade in their dreams of glittering ministerial careers for a seat in the House of Lords. But in the meantime they would be praised for putting the nation above party.

We also have the valuable lesson of the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis (‘the Dismissal’), which saw the Labor prime minister of three years, Gough Whitlam, summarily sacked by governor-general Sir John Kerr – who was, of course, acting on behalf of the queen (3). On the very same day (November 11) Kerr installed the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser of the Liberal Party, as caretaker prime minister and announced a double-dissolution election for the following month. Fraser and his coalition National Country Party partners won the largest majority government to date in Australian history, while Labor suffered a 30-seat swing and the indignity of having its House of Representatives numbers cut almost in half to 36 seats. Yes, there were a few protests, but they came to nothing – and, of course, the current governor-general (Sir Peter John Cosgrove, AK, MC (4) still has the same powers of dismissal.

What is vital to understand – yet seems beyond the economistic left – is that royalty is not about bowing or swearing loyalty to some weird feudal relic: it is an integral part of today’s constitutional system. In other words, it is a vital prop of the British state. Extraordinary things could happen and do happen, and Jeremy Corbyn could end up a victim of such forcess if he does not change his game.

The Labour leader ought to drop his platonic republicanism and start treating the monarchy as a serious problem.

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/06/04/the-royal-wedding/feed/0JOHN MACLEAN – SPEECH FROM THE DOCK, 9th May 1918http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/05/10/john-maclean-speech-from-the-dock-9th-may-1918/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/05/10/john-maclean-speech-from-the-dock-9th-may-1918/#commentsThu, 10 May 2018 21:15:05 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12438It is the centenary of John Maclean’s Speech from the Dock on 9th May 1918. Emancipation & Liberation are commemorating the occasion by posting it this famous speech.

SPEECH FROM THE DOCK

John Maclean making his Speech from the Dock in Edinburgh on the 9th May, 1918

It has been said that they cannot fathom my motive. For the full period of my active life I have been a teacher of economics to the working classes, and my contention has always been that capitalism is rotten to its foundations, and must give place to a new society. I had a lecture, the principal heading of which was “Thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not kill”, and I pointed out that as a consequence of the robbery that goes on in all civilised countries today, our respective countries have had to keep armies, and that inevitably our armies must clash together. On that and on other grounds, I consider capitalism the most infamous, bloody and evil system that mankind has ever witnessed. My language is regarded as extravagant language, but the events of the past four years have proved my contention.

He (the Lord Advocate) accused me of my motives. My motives are clean. My motives are genuine. If my motives were not clean and genuine, would I have made my statements while these shorthand reporters were present? I am out for the benefit of society, not for any individual human being, but I realise this, that justice and freedom can only be obtained when society is placed on a sound economic basis. That sound economic basis is wanting today, and hence the bloodshed we are having. I have not tried to get young men particularly. The young men have come to my meetings as well as the old men. I know quite well that in the reconstruction of society, the class interests of those who are on top will resist the change, and the only factor in society that can make for a clean sweep in society is the working class. Hence the class war. The whole history of society has proved that society moves forward as a consequence of an under-class overcoming the resistance of a class on top of them. So much for that.

I also wish to point out to you this, that when the late King Edward the Seventh died, I took as the subject of one of my lectures “Edward the Peacemaker”. I pointed out at the time that his “entente cordiale” with France and his alliance with Russia were for the purpose of encircling Germany as a result of the coming friction between Germany and this country because of commercial rivalry. I then denounced that title “Edward the Peacemaker” and said that it should be “Edward the Warmaker”. The events which have ensued prove my contention right up to the hilt, I am only proceeding along the lines upon which I have proceeded for many years. I have pointed out at my economic classes that, owing to the surplus created by the workers, it was necessary to create a market outside this country, because of the inability of the workers to purchase the wealth they create. You must have markets abroad, and in order to have these markets you must have empire. I have also pointed out that the capitalist development of Germany since the Franco-Prussian War has forced upon that country the necessity for empire as well as this country, and in its search for empire there must be a clash between these two countries. I have been teaching that and what I have taught is coming perfectly true.

I wish no harm to any human being, but I, as one man, am going to exercise my freedom of speech. No human being on the face of the earth, no government is going to take from me my right to speak, my right to protest against wrong, my right to do everything that is for the benefit of mankind. I am not here, then, as the accused; I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot.

In connection with the “ca’ canny” question at Parkhead Forge, I wish to take up some of the particular points first of all before I deal with the revolution. It is quite evident that it was in connection with a report in the Forward that reference was made to David Kirkwood. It was reported that Kirkwood had made a record output. Now David Kirkwood, representing the Parkhead Forge workers, at the end of 1915, when the dilution of labour began, put forward a printed statement for the benefit of Mr Lloyd George and his colleagues, the first sentence of which, in big type, was—“What you wish is greater output”. He said that the Parkhead workers were then prepared to give a greater output and accept dilution if they, the workers, had some control over the conditions under which the greater output would accrue. That was his contention. Since he was got into position he seems to have boasted that he has got a record output. The question was put to me. Was this consistent with the position and with the attitude of the working class? I said it was not consistent with the attitude and the position of the working class, that his business was to get back right down to the normal, to “ca’ canny” so far as the general output was concerned.

The country has been exploited by the capitalist in every sphere, to get the toilers to work harder to bring victory. I said at the commencement of the war that while this was being done, and while assurances were being given that at the end of the war the people would get back to normal, I said that circumstances would make such a return impossible. Now I have ample evidence to support that belief; I have used it at my meetings at Weir’s of Cathcart—that they were asking the workers to work harder and harder, because there is going to be “the war after the war”, the economic war which brought on this war. You see, therefore, the workers are brought into a position where they are speeded up, and they are never allowed to get back again. They are speeded up again and again. What is the position of the worker? This country is not a free country. The worker is deprived of land or access to the land; he is deprived of workshops or access to the materials and tools of production; the worker has only one thing to do in the market, and that is to sell his labour power. The capitalist purchased that labour power, and when he gets the worker inside the workshop, his business is to extract as much of that labour power out of him as possible. On the other hand, when it comes to wages, then the employer applies the principle of “ca’ canny”. “Ca’ canny” is quite justifiable when it comes to the employer giving wages to the workers, and we have seen it since the commencement of the war. Prices rose right away from the commencement of the war while the workers’ wages were kept at the old normal. Their wages were kept low. The purchasing power of the workers’ wages was therefore diminished. They were therefore robbed to that extent. At the same time the workers were asked in the name of the country to work harder. “But,” said the employers, “we will not give you any more money, although the money you are getting is purchasing less in the way of food, etc.” That is the position.

The employers are changing their opinions now as a result of experience, but in the past they considered it in their economic interest to pay as low a wage as possible. On the other hand the position of the workers is to give as little of their energy as they possibly can and to demand the highest wage possible. If it is right for the employer to get the maximum of energy and pay the minimum of wage, then it is equally right for the worker to give the minimum of his energy and demand the maximum of wage.

What is right for the one is equally right for the other, although the interests of the two classes are diametrically opposed. That is the position, and in view of the fact that many of the workers have over-worked themselves and have had to lie off through overstrain, and considering the treatment they get when thrown on the scrapheap—kicked out like dogs when they are no longer useful—they are compelled to look after their own welfare. The worker has therefore in the past adopted the policy of “ca’ canny”, and I have in the interests of the working class advocated the policy of “ca’ canny” , not because I am against the war, but, knowing that after the war the worker will have the new conditions imposed upon him, I hold still to the principle of “ca’ canny”. I accede to that.

So far as Parkhead Forge is concerned I also pointed out that none of the great big guns had been made for some time prior to the great offensive. When the offensive came, Gough, the friend of Sir Edward Carson, the man who before the war was going to cut down the Irishmen, retreated and lost so many guns, and then the Glasgow workers had to give over their Easter holiday in order to make those guns. We have, therefore, Beardmore and others responsible for shortage of certain material, and we know from further disclosures that millions of shells have been useless, and perhaps that has been due to the fact of over-speeding, so that even over-speeding may do nothing for the advancement of the war. Furthermore, if big reserves of material are going to be built up, and the Germans are to be allowed to get them, that is going to be to the advantage of the Germans, and not to the advantage of the British.

With regard to the next point, “down tools”, so far as Glasgow is concerned, I do not think I told the workers to “down tools”. I am of the opinion that I said, “Now that you are determined to ’down tools’ it is of no use standing idle; you must do something for yourselves.” As a matter of fact my statement was based on a resolution that had been passed by the ASE in the Clyde area, the official Engineers’ Committee. It met, and it determined to down tools against the introduction of the Man Power Bill.

At the same time that was supplemented by unofficial effort at Geddes’s meeting in the City Hall. There a resolution was put up by the workers and carried virtually unanimously, that if the Man Power Bill was put into operation, the Clyde district workers would “down tools”. It was unnecessary for me, therefore, in light of these official and unofficial statements, to urge the “down tools” policy.

As a matter of fact, we were told that the government had dismissed many munition girls just immediately prior to the great offensive, so that if the workers are guilty of stoppage of output of munitions, the government is likewise responsible in the dismissal of those thousands of girls.

Now then, food and farms. I pointed out to the workers that what was necessary if they stopped work was the getting of food. There had been a shortage; the government had held up the supplies, for several reasons probably—perhaps to get this rationing passed, in order to have a tight hold on food, and also lest the people get out of hand in reference to this Man Power Bill. I know that there was plenty of food in stores in Glasgow, and that the farmers had food stored up in their farms. The farmers have used the war in order to make huge profits for themselves, and then the government assisted them in connection with the potato regulations; and latterly, at the end of last year the Corn Production Act was passed not in the interests of the farm labourers, but in the interests of the farmers.

When the demand for more food production was made, the farmers said they would do their best, and the government refused to give the farm labourers a minimum wage of 25s to 30s a week—25s at that time being equivalent to 10s in normal times. The farmers were going to get extra as a consequence of the Corn Production Act. I therefore pointed out that if the workers went to the farmers and did not get the food stored up in the farms, they should burn the farms. We as socialists have no interest in destroying any property. We want property to be kept because we want that property to be used for housing accommodation or other reasons, but I specially emphasised about the farmers for the purpose of drawing attention to this particular point.

In the same way, when it came to a question of seizing the press, I suggested that when the Daily Record was seized, the plant should be broken up. I did not say that in connection with the Glasgow Herald. I said so in connection with the Record not that it is a good thing to break up printing plant, but in order to draw attention to the Harmsworth family and to the Rothermeres and so on, and their vile press which seems to be an index of the culture of Britain. I mention that particularly here, that I said the Record plant should be broken up, in order to emphasise the disgust of the organised workers with regard to that particular family of newspapers.

So far as Ireland and America are concerned, that was mentioned particularly for the purpose of getting food from the St Lawrence, food from the United States, and food from the Argentine. What was needed was food in order to hold our own, for, as the Glasgow Herald pointed out, when the Bolsheviks first came into power, Britain was withholding food from Russia, in the expectation that frost and famine would overthrow the Bolsheviks. That is to say, they were anxious to murder women and children inside Russia, as well as men. The suggestion I made was in order to draw attention of the workers to the need of having plenty of foodstuffs to keep them going.

So far as the government’s responsibility for the murder of women and children is concerned, the reason for my statement is perfectly obvious. They have been accusing the Germans of killing women and children in this country. Perfectly true. Of course bombs dropped in Germany have not killed women and children, marvellous to say! But that apart; we had the government getting hold of the food supplies immediately prior to and immediately after the New Year, and creating a shortage. The government was therefore responsible for the queues.

Women were standing in queues in the cold, and women had died of what they had contracted during their standing in the queues. The women had died therefore in consequence of the action of the government, and I threw the responsibility upon the government—and I do so still.

We know that women and children—human material—have been used up inside the factories, and the housing of the working class in this country has been so bad, and is so bad today, that the women and children of the working class die in greater proportion than the women and children of the better-to-do classes. I have always pointed out that the death rate among the working classes has always exceeded that in the better-to-do districts.

I also pointed out that the British government had sent Russian subjects back to Russia to fight, and had given their wives 12s 6d per week and 2s 6d for each child. Now, when I was functioning as Russian Consul, two deputations of Russian women came to me and they told me sorrowful tales of depression, disease and death in consequence of the fact that they had received 12s 6d per week and 2s 6d for each child. I wrote to the Secretary for Scotland in regard to that, and I received no reply. The children ought not to suffer because their fathers have been taken, but those children have suffered. There is not a Lithuanian family in the West of Scotland but has trouble today as a consequence of the starving of these people. These women and children of the Russian community have died as a consequence of the meagre supplies given to them by the British government, and I seize this opportunity for the purpose of making my statement public, in connection with these women, in the hope that the public in general will press the government to see that these women and children are attended to at least on the same scale as the wives and dependants of British soldiers.

With regard to the Yankees, I said, and I say today, that the Yankees are out for themselves. The British press—the British capitalist press —sneered and jeered at the Americans before the Americans came in, and pointed out how the Americans were making piles of profit out of the war, but were not participating in this fight for so- called freedom. Those insults were offered to America, and when Mr Woodrow Wilson said that America was too proud to fight, then that was used venomously. Therefore, if I erred, I erred on the same side as the capitalist class of this country. I made the statement on American authority, not off my own bat. My authority is Professor Roland G. Usher, Professor of History at Washington University. I think his statement in Pan- Americanism is one of the finest, showing the moves throughout the world leading up to this war, and Usher has his bias in favour of Britain.

What I wish to particularly refer to are his two books, Pan-Germanism and The Challenge of the Future. In Pan-Germanism he surveys North and South and Central America. He takes the Atlantic first, and explains what will be the consequence of the war as regards South and Central America whichever side wins, and then he takes the Pacific. He works it out from a material and economic point of view, his purpose being to get Central and South America to work in with the United States. In his later book he modifies that position—that is to say in The Challenge of the Future. He points out that America is still today economically dependent, that is to say she has got to pay interest to financiers in France, in Britain, and therefore America cannot afford to carry out the bold schemes referred to in his book Pan-Americanism.

I may now state that today the businessmen of this country know perfectly well that the Yankees are boasting of their independence. Therefore when you see references to American independence, that means that she no longer needs to pay interest to investors from outside and that her policy will be modified in consequence of that new phase. This gentleman points out that as a consequence of American dependence she must say which side she will take. This book was printed prior to America entering the war. Woodrow Wilson’s policy works in admirably with the suggestions in that book of Professor Usher, The Challenge of the Future.

We know quite well, too, that the United States of America prevented Japan in 1915 getting economic and political control over North China. Twenty-one articles were imposed on China after the Japs had released their grip of the Germans there. America, alive to her own interests, getting to know of these twenty-one points, forced Japan to withdraw. America was there working in her own interests.

Japan has been, I think, incited to land at Vladivostok in consequence of the Russian revolution, and in order to crush the Bolsheviks. The allies on both sides are united to crush the Bolsheviks. America did not take that course. America early on began to back up the Bolsheviks because America was afraid that, if Japan got half Siberian Russia, that would give her a strategic control of Siberia, and it would mean a closed door to American contact across the Pacific with Russia proper. America therefore has been looking to her own interests, and for that reason I contend that the Yankees, who have been the worshippers of the mighty dollar, are looking after their own interests in the present war; and as to the great boast they have been making about what they are going to do, and their inadequate returns—that, I think, shows that America has not been over-anxious to plunge right away into this war and made all the sacrifices she has said. I know, of course, that America has had her own troubles at home, racial troubles, and also troubles with the workers. Numerous strikes have taken place in America since the commencement of the war, not only in consequence of the war, but also in connection with the economic position.

Now then, I come to the doctors. The doctors I referred to were the prison doctors. When I was in Peterhead it was plain sailing until the middle of December, and then the trouble began. I was fevered up, and being able to combat that, I was chilled down. Two men came to see me at the end of December, a prominent lecturer in this country, and Mr Sutherland, MP, and to them I protested that my food was being drugged. I said that there was alcohol in the food lowering my temperature. I know that potassium bromide is given to people in order to lower their temperature. It may have been potassium bromide that was used in order to lower my temperature. I was aware of what was taking place in Peterhead from hints and statements by other prisoners there; that from January to March, the so-called winter period, the doctor is busy getting the people into the hospital, there breaking up their organs and their systems.

I call that period the eye-squinting period, because the treatment then given puts the eyes out of view. Through numerous expedients I was able to hold my own. I saw these men round about me in a horrible plight. I have stated in public since that I would rather be immediately put to death than condemned to a life sentence in Peterhead. Attacks were made upon the organs of these men and also upon their nervous systems, and we know from the conscientious objectors that the government have taken their percentage of these men—some have died, some have committed suicide, others have been knocked off their heads, and in this way got into asylums. The very same process has gone on here. Mrs Hobhouse has done a good service to mankind in registering the facts, but, unfortunately for Mrs Hobhouse, she does not know how the results have been obtained. I experienced part of the process, and I wish to emphasise the fact that this callous and cold system of destroying people is going on inside prisons now.

Whatever is done to me now, I give notice that I take no food inside your prisons, absolutely no food, because of the treatment that was meted out to me. If food is forced upon me, and if I am forcibly fed, then my friends have got to bear in mind that if any evil happens to me, I am not responsible for the consequences, but the British government. If anything had happened to me when I was last in prison, it would have been attributed to John MacLean, not to those who are working in the interests of the government. I have been able to lay down my principle and policy, not from mere internal and personal experience, but from objective experience. I studied the matter carefully, I combated the evils that were going to be perpetrated by the government by reducing my food to the minimum, and the present Secretary for Scotland knows that when I was in Perth I wrote to him asking for more food because of my reduced weight. I was about eight stones in weight at the time, and the doctor after weighing me had to grant me more food. The food, however, was of no use to me. I threw it into the pot. My position is, therefore, that I take no more government food, that I will not allow any food to be forced in upon me, and if any food is forced in upon me I am not responsible for it, but when the government can launch millions of men into the field of battle, then perhaps the mere disposal of one man is a mere bagatelle and a trifle.

So far as Russian freedom and British slavery are concerned, I wish to draw attention to the fact that an article appeared in The Scotsman the other day about Bolshevism, and I have a feeling that that article was written especially for this trial, to create a feeling against Bolshevism. The statements m that article are a travesty. Inside Russia, since Lenin and Trotsky and the Bolsheviks came into power, there have been fewer deaths than for the same period under any Tsar for three hundred years. Capitalists have been killed perhaps, officers have been killed perhaps, because they have not submitted to those who have come to the top—the majority of the people—in the name of Bolshevism. Some may have been put to death.

When there was a shortage and disorganisation of the food supplies before the Bolsheviks came into power, there may have been individuals who, in their scramble for food themselves, have gone to excess, but the crimes of individuals cannot be charged to governments. No person would hold the government responsible for the action of those individuals. The Bolshevik government has not given orders to kill men. They have to imprison men until a complete reconstruction of society has come about. It may be news to some of you that the co-operative movement in Russia has grown more rapidly than in any other part of the world, and since the Bolsheviks have come into power, co-operation has been growing more and more rapidly. The universities have been used during the day, and in the evenings, to train the working classes in order that they may manage the affairs of their country in an intelligent manner. The schools have also been used in the evenings, the music halls have been used, and the theatres, and the picture houses, all have been used, not for the trivial trash which is given to the people of this country—but all for the purpose of organising the production of food and the work inside the workshops and factories.

We saw that prior to our comrades in Russia signing their treaty, when the Germans made their advance into Estonia, Lithuania, and so on—the border countries between Germany and Russia—the capitalist class in the respective towns had lists of men who were members of the soviets, and those members of the soviets were taken and put against a wall, and shot at the instigation of the propertied class of Russia. They have been responsible for more deaths than the soviets. Our Finnish comrades, the Red Guards, have pointed out that the ordinary procedure of war has not been acceded to them, that as soon as the White Guards, the capitalist class, take any one of them prisoner, they immediately put them to death. It has been said that our comrades over there in Russia were working hand in hand with the Germans, and the proof of this was that the Germans allowed Lenin to pass through Austrian territory. Our comrades have stood up against Germany as best they could, and the capitalists—the so-called patriots of Russia—have been working hand in hand with Germany in order to crush the people of Russia. That has been done in the Ukraine. It has been done in the various states stolen by Germany from Russia.

The Lord Advocate pointed out here that I probably was a more dangerous enemy that you had got to face than in the Germans. The working class, when they rise for their own, are more dangerous to capitalists than even the German enemies at your gates. That has been repeatedly indicated in the press, and I have stated it as well. I am glad that you have made this statement at this, the most historic trial that has ever been held in Scotland, when the working class and the capitalist class meet face to face. The Bolsheviks got into power in October, and the people wished peace, and they were doing their best to get peace. The Bolsheviks wished peace throughout the world. They wished the war to cease in order that they might settle down to the real business of life, the economic reorganisation of the whole of Russia. They therefore got into negotiation with the Germans, and they and the Germans met at Brest Litovsk.

Towards the end of December there was a pause in the negotiations for ten days, in order to allow the British and their allies to go to Brest Litovsk. Ten days were given. The last day was 4 January of this year. Great Britain paid no attention to this opportunity, but on 5 January Lloyd George, in one of his insidious speeches, seemed to climb down as it were. He was followed by Mr Woodrow Wilson. But a speech by Mr Lloyd George on the 5th was of no use. It was mere talk. It was mere camouflage, or, a better word still, bluff, pure bluff. Why did the government not accept the opportunity and go to Brest Litovsk? If conditions absolutely favourable to Germany were proposed, then Britain would have stopped the negotiations and plunged once more into the war, and I am confident of this, if Germany had not toed the line and come up square so far as peace negotiations were concerned, that the Russian workers would have taken the side of Britain, and I am confident of this, that the socialists in all the allied countries would have backed up their governments in order to absolutely crush Germany, and we would at the same time have appealed to the socialists of Germany to overthrow their government.

Great Britain did not do so. On the other hand, they came on with their Man Power Bill, and also with their factor of short food. All these things must be considered in their ensemble, before you can understand the position taken up by myself. When this universal peace meeting was held at Brest Litovsk, then Trotsky played a very, very bold game. He knew the risks he ran. He and the Bolsheviks spread millions of leaflets amongst the workers of Germany in the trenches – the German soldiers – urging them to stop fighting and to overthrow the Kaiser, the junkers, and the capitalist classes of Germany. They made a bold bid by trying to get the German workers on to their side. Great Britain has been doing the very same thing since the commencement of the war. Great Britain has been trying to bring about, and hoping and urging for a revolution in Germany, in the hope that the working class would overthrow the autocratic class there and give us peace.

From a British point of view, revolution inside Germany is good; revolution inside Britain is bad. So says this learned gentleman. He can square it if he can. I cannot square it. The conditions of Germany economically are the conditions of Britain, and there is only a very slight difference between the political structure of Germany and that of this country at the best. And so far as we workers are concerned, we are not concerned with the political superstructure; we are concerned with the economic foundation of society, and that determines our point of view in politics and industrial action. Our Russian comrades, therefore, did the very same as the British have been doing; they appealed to the German soldiers and workers to overthrow their government.

Strikes broke forth in Italy. The strikes in January passed into Germany, more menacing strikes than have taken place inside the British Isles. An appeal was made from comrades to comrades. Many soldiers in Germany mutinied; many sailors of Germany mutinied, and these men are being shot down by their government. All hail to those working men of Germany who refused at the bidding of the capitalist to go on with this war. Their names will go down bright and shining where those of the capitalist of today and of the past will have been forgotten.

It would be a very bad thing for the workers of the world if a revolution were developed and carried through to success in Germany and no similar effort were made in this country. The German workers’ enemy is the same as our enemy in this country—and if it was their business and

their right and their duty to overthrow their autocratic government, then it will be a duty on us not to allow these men to overthrow their government, and then to allow France, Britain and Italy to march over them and make these German workers slaves at the dictates of the capitalists of the other parts of the world. There was the situation from their point of view and from our point of view too.

It has been pointed out that if we developed a revolution the Germans would come over and, instead of having liberty, we would be under the iron heel of the Kaiser. If I grant that that is true, it is equally true in the other case that the allies would do in Germany what the German Kaiser with the capitalist class of Germany would do in this country. There can only be a revolution when the workers of all the countries stand united and capitalism is crushed, and until then the war must go on incessantly and incessantly. It is not because I am against my own people. My own people are the workers here, and the workers in Germany and elsewhere.

It was not the workers who instigated the war. The workers have no economic interest to serve as a consequence of the war, and because of that, it is my appeal to my class that makes me a patriot so far as my class is concerned, and when I stand true to my class, the working class, in which I was born, it is because my people were swept out of the Highlands, and it was only because of my own ability that I remained. I have remained true to my class, the working class, and whatever I do I think I am doing in the interest of my class and my country. I am no traitor to my country. I stand loyal to my country because I stand loyal to the class which creates the wealth throughout the whole of the world.

We are out for life and all that life can give us. I therefore took what action I did in the light of what was transpiring inside Russia, inside Austria and inside Germany. You have got to bear that in mind when you wish to understand my remarks. I therefore urged the workers of this country that if they were going to strike, mere striking was useless, because they would be starved back into work again, and that if they were going to be against the Man Power Bill, it meant that they were out for peace. And as there was no sign on either side of coming to an amicable constitutional conclusion, then it was the business of the workers to take the whole matter in hand themselves.

War was declared! No matter the motive, no matter the cause, all constitution and order was thrown aside, and in the prosecution of the war the British government found it necessary to throw aside every law in this country and to bring in the Defence of the Realm Act, which means the negation of all law in the country. I have repeatedly pointed out that if the government wishes to get a grip of any individual, they do so under the Defence of the Realm Act. The government have power to do anything they desire. That may be right, or it may be wrong, but the position is this, that the bringing in of the Defence of the Realm Act has thrown aside all law and order as we know it during normal periods.

In the plunge into the war we have the abolition of constitutional methods, and therefore I contended, and I contend today, that if it is right and proper on the part of the government to throw aside law and order —constitutional methods—and to adopt methods that mankind has never seen before, then it is equally right that the members of the working class, if the war is not going to cease in a reasonable time, should bring about a reasonable settlement to the workers in no victory to either side.

If one side or the other wins, then the revenge will come, as France today is seeking revenge after the drubbing she got in 1871. Realising that we, as representatives of the workers of the world, do not wish one side or the other to be the victors, we wish the status quo prior to the war to be re-established. If the workers are going to do that, then it means that they have to adopt methods and tactics entirely different from the methods which would be adopted, or could be adopted under normal circumstances. Abnormal lines of action must be taken such as our comrades in Russia took. The very circumstances of the war forced in upon the Russian workers committees and their national soviets the line of action which they adopted, and the only way we could do it would be to adopt methods peculiar to the working-class organisation in this country in the interests of the workers themselves.

The suggestions I made were intended only to develop revolutionary thought inside the minds of the workers. I pointed out at the meeting on the 20th that representatives of the police were present, and therefore if the workers were going to take action themselves, it would be absolutely foolish and stupid for them to adopt the suggestions I had given them. I only gave out these suggestions so that they might work out plans of their own if they thought fit to take action to bring about peace. I was convinced, and I am still convinced, that the working class, if they are going to take action, must not only go for peace but for revolution. I pointed out to the workers that, in order to solve all the problems of capitalism, they would have to get the land and the means of production.

I pointed out to them that if capitalism lasted after the war, with the growing size of the trusts, with the great aggregations that were taking place, with the improved machinery inside the works, with the improved methods of speeding up the workers, with the development of research and experiment, that we were going to have the workers turning out three, four and five times as much wealth as they had done in pre-war times, and a great problem would arise—a greater problem than ever before—in this country of disposing of its surplus goods on the markets of the world, not only of getting markets for these surplus goods, but of getting the raw materials. We see today in the committees appointed by the government that they are anxious to get control of the markets of the world in order to exclude the Germans.

Our government has already appointed a Land Organisation of the Board of Trade and of the Foreign Office whereby it is going to plant agents here and there throughout the world, so that in a scientific method British products may be thrown on to the markets of the world. This is scientific method applied to commerce internationally as well as nationally. These preparations are being made, it is being said, for the purpose of carrying on the war after the war. Nobody denies that there is going to be a war after the war, an economic war between the Germans and their friends, and the British and the Americans and their friends, and there is going to be a war between the nations and the respective governments will take care that, as far as they can, their capital will be planted in areas over which they have control.

You have, then, the rush for empire. We see that the Americans already have got one or two of the islands in the West Indies, and I understand that America has also got hold of Dutch Guiana. It has also been suggested that Mexico be brought into the American States. Britain herself is looking after her own interests. She has taken the German colonies, she is also in Mesopotamia and in Palestine, going there for strategic reasons, but when Britain gets hold of Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Arabia, she will use them for her own ends, and I do not blame Britain for that. Britain has got many troubles.

We see Japan also on the outlook. Japan has been trying repeatedly to get control of Northern China. She would also like to get a great big chunk of Siberia. Even today we see the tentacles being sent out, all anxious to grab more and more power. We know the secret treaties and disclosures made by our Bolshevik comrades. We know that these nations have been building up their plans so that when the Germans have been crushed they will get this territory or that territory. They are all out for empire. That was absolutely necessary for the commercial prosperity of the nations.

All the property destroyed during the war will be replaced. In the next five years there is going to be a great world trade depression and the respective governments, to stave off trouble, must turn more and more into the markets of the world to get rid of their produce, and in fifteen years’ time from the close of this war—I have pointed this out at all my meetings—we are into the next war if capitalism lasts; we cannot escape it.

Britain has the wealth. Britain did everything she could to hold back the war. That necessarily had to be the attitude of Great Britain, but in spite of all Great Britain’s skill or cunning, there has been war. I have heard it said that the Western civilisations are destroying themselves as the Eastern civilisations destroyed themselves. In fifteen years’ time we may have the first great war bursting out in the Pacific—America v. Japan, or even Japan and China v. America. We have then the possibilifies of another war, far greater and far more serious in its consequences than the present war. I have pointed that out to my audiences.

In view of the fact that the great powers are not prepared to stop the war until the one side or the other is broken down, it is our business as members of the working class to see that this war ceases today, not only to save the lives of the young men of the present, but also to stave off the next great war. That has been my attitude and justifies my conduct in recent times. I am out for an absolute reconstruction of society, on a cooperative basis, throughout all the world; when we stop the need for armies and navies, we stop the need for wars.

I have taken up unconstitutional action at this time because of the abnormal circumstances and because precedent has been given by the British government. I am a socialist, and have been fighting and will fight for an absolute reconstruction of society for the benefit of all. I am proud of my conduct. I have squared my conduct with my intellect, and if everyone had done so this war would not have taken place. I act square and clean for my principles. I have nothing to retract. I have nothing to be ashamed of. Your class position is against my class position. There are two classes of morality. There is the working class morality and there is the capitalist class morality. There is this antagonism as there is the antagonism between Germany and Britain. A victory for Germany is a defeat for Britain; a victory for Britain is a defeat for Germany. And it is exactly the same so far as our classes are concerned. What is moral for the one class is absolutely immoral for the other, and vice-versa. No matter what your accusations against me may be, no matter what reservations you keep at the back of your head, my appeal is to the working class. I appeal exclusively to them because they and they only can bring about the time when the whole world will be in one brotherhood, on a sound economic foundation. That, and that alone, can be the means of bringing about a re-organisation of society. That can only be obtained when the people of the world get the world, and retain the world.

This article was posted at:- https://www.marxists.org/archive/maclean/works/1918-dock.htm

]]>http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/05/10/john-maclean-speech-from-the-dock-9th-may-1918/feed/1LABOUR EXPEL LEADING ANTI-RACIST FROM PARTY TO APPEASE THE RIGHThttp://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/05/10/labour-expel-leading-anti-racists-from-party-to-appease-the-right/
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2018/05/10/labour-expel-leading-anti-racists-from-party-to-appease-the-right/#commentsThu, 10 May 2018 15:57:27 +0000http://republicancommunist.org/blog/?p=12424We are reposting this article by Tony Greenstein, writing on the sacrifice of an outstanding anti-racist, Marc Wadsworth for having dared to criticise a pro-Israel MP.

CORBYN GROW A BACKBONE

Marc Wadswoth, leading anti-racist campaigner expelled form the Labour Party by the Right

Watching the uncritical acceptance by Jeremy Corbyn’s office of the expulsion of Marc Wadsworth is like watching someone slowly committing suicide oblivious to all offers of help. The inability of Corbyn to confront the pro-Israel lobby, which is so desperate to find ‘anti-Semitism’ that it creates a wholly artificial furore over a six-year old mural, is as bewildering as it is depressing. It is as if Corbyn’s ‘director of strategy and communications’, Seamus Milne, has a death wish.

The decision by the National Kangaroo Committee to expel longstanding black anti-racist activist, Marc Wadsworth, is shameful. The role of Corbyn’s office, which tried to get Marc to call off Labour Against the Witchhunt’s lobby of the hearing, to which Smeeth was accompanied by a parliamentary lynch mob, was cowardly. It does not seem to occur to Corbyn that those supporting Smeeth – eg, Wes Streeting, John Mann, Jess Phillips, Joan Ryan, Luciana Berger – are the same creatures that have dedicated themselves to overthrowing him.

Marc has a long and proud record of fighting racism and fascism, from campaigning to secure the defeat of the British National Party’s first councillor in Britain, Derek Beacon, in the Isle of Dogs, to getting Nelson Mandela to sponsor the Stephen Lawrence campaign. This was at a time when the Labour Party under Blair completely ignored the Lawrence campaign.

What makes Marc’s expulsion even worse is that it was at the behest of the Zionist Board of Deputies under rightwing Tory Jonathan Arkush. The same Arkush had no hesitation in welcoming the ascent to power of Donald Trump and his anti-Semitic entourage. To use an expression used by the Washington Post, “Anti-Semitism is no longer an undertone of Trump’s campaign. It’s the melody.”1 Arkush has also spoken at a meeting that included the far-right US group, the Jewish Defense League.

Not once has Arkush criticised the Tories’ links with genuine anti-Semitic parties, such as the Polish Law and Order Party and Latvia’s National Alliance, which are part of the European Conservative Reform group in the European parliament, along with the Conservative Party.

A longstanding black anti-racist has been sacrificed to appease Arkush, Smeeth and the rest of the crew who make up Israel’s apartheid lobby in Britain. What is equally appalling is that Momentum, under its property developer dictator, Jon Lansman, has not only said nothing about the expulsion or witch-hunt, but has aided the false anti-Semitism campaign by claiming there is widespread “unconscious” anti-Semitism within the Labour Party. This at a time when the Windrush generation have been subject to deportation and denied benefits and medical treatment – genuine racism is not “unconscious”. It is because anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is virtually non-existent that Lansman and Momentum’s leadership have resorted to Freudian psycho-analysis. Let us be clear about one thing: Marc’s expulsion has nothing to do with anti-Semitism any more than my expulsion or the prospective expulsions of Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker have anything to do with it. This campaign is about Israel, not anti-Semitism.

Of course, if you say that the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is false, then that is proof of your own anti-Semitism! It is much like when someone is defined as insane. The more they protest they are normal, the more psychiatrists are convinced of their illness.

Arkush and Jonathan Goldstein of the Jewish Leadership Council complain, in all innocence, that they are wrongly accused of “smearing” Corbyn. Perish the thought. Using the language of the left, they protest: “We are not merely being denied the most basic principle of anti-racist behaviour – solidarity – but are viciously accused of smears, of dirty tricks, of lies.”2 Who would guess that on March 30, after Israel began murdering unarmed protestors in Gaza, these poor victims of racism had blamed the killings on the Palestinians?

The proof that anti-Semitism is a marginal phenomenon in the Labour Party is the fact that those expelled for it have all been Jewish, black, anti-racist or a combination of these. It is a strange purge of the form of racism known as anti-Semitism when the real racists in the Labour Party – those councillors who have evicted Roma and gypsies or who have demonised Muslims – are left alone.

Collaboration

Zionism has never really objected to anti-Semitism. From the very start of the Zionist movement anti-Semites and Zionists have collaborated. Livingstone’s main offence was to point to a truth attested to by Zionist historians. The Nazis and the Zionists had a racial conception of humanity. They divided society according to race, not class. The collaboration of Zionism with the Nazis is a fact. Not only did the Zionists conclude a trade agreement – Ha’avara – with the Nazis at the very time that the international Jewish boycott of Nazi Germany was at its height, but they also campaigned against the lowering of immigration barriers in the USA, or opening any country to Jewish refugees bar Palestine itself. As Ben Gurion told Mapai’s central committee on December 9 1938, after Kristallnacht Britain had agreed to the immigration of 10,000 Kindertransport Jewish children:

“If I knew that it would be possib le to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the people of Israel.”3

Sometimes it was difficult to tell who was a Zionist and who was an anti-Semite. Zionists held that anti-Semitism was partly the fault of the Jews in the diaspora for not having moved to Palestine. The Jews were strangers in someone else’s land and as such they had developed unhealthy asocial characteristics. By going to Palestine they would cleanse themselves.

Israel’s first justice minister, Pinhas Rosenbluth, described Palestine as “an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin.”4 The number of anti-Semites who queued up to pay the Zionists a compliment were legion – including Alfred Rosenberg, minister for Ostland and the Nazi Party’s main theoretician, who wrote in 1919 that “Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations.”5

Corbyn needs to face up to a simple truth: apologists for Israel routinely resort to accusations of anti-Semitism to defend Israel’s murderous practices. It is perfectly understandable. How do you defend the beating and torture of children, the shooting of unarmed demonstrators, the demolition of schools and homes other than by impugning the motives of the accuser?

When Natalie Portman, the Hollywood star who is a liberal Zionist, recently boycotted the Genesis Prize – Israel’s equivalent of the Nobel – because she refused to be in the same room as Binyamin Netanyahu, Likud minister Yuval Steinitz accused her of anti-Semitism.6 There are numerous other examples.

Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, one of the main proponents of the false anti-Semitism allegations, has stated that Corbyn’s apology for alleged Labour anti-Semitism “contained the odd assertion that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitic”.7 In other words, anything but the most anodyne criticism of Israeli apartheid is anti-Semitic.

This is not a trivial matter. The right in the Labour Party has abandoned a full-on confrontation with Corbyn. Instead they have resorted to a perverted version of identity politics, whereby the oppressor’s identity becomes equally valid as that of the oppressed. They are using the language of the left to attack the left. Corbyn and his office seem incapable of grasping this simple truth.

Sabotage

One thing is for sure. The false ‘Enough is Enough’ anti-Semitism campaign was launched in order to sabotage Labour’s local election campaign. It is sapping the strength of the Labour Party and diverting attention from the Tories’ problems over Windrush. Every time there is an expulsion there is a demand for another one. As the Tories’ appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s demonstrated, the more you appease an aggressor, the hungrier they become. Nothing Corbyn can or will do will satisfy Labour’s imperialist right and its Zionist allies.

But it is worse than this. If, by chance, Corbyn were ever to get into power, then he would be confronted with opposition by the bankers and major industrialists that would be 10 times what the likes of Arkush and Goldstein can offer. Then he would be up against the civil service and the rest of the British establishment. If he cannot put down loudmouths like John Mann and Wes Streeting, there is no way he is going to stand up to the transnationals and investment banks.

Corbyn needs to grow a backbone fast and remove the whip from Streeting, Mann, Ryan, Smeeth, etc. And that should be for starters. He needs to confront Labour’s right by encouraging deselections. That is the only way he will see in a radical Labour government. He has to go on the offensive instead of cringing and making useless apologies for a non-existent anti-Semitism. Instead we are now hearing calls from the Zionists for the removal of the whip from Chris Williamson MP for sharing a platform with Jackie Walker.

The reality is that, having foresworn a campaign of reselecting the rightwing MPs, his enemies on the back benches – over half the PLP – are simply waiting for their chance to stab him in the back. The only real question is whether they will move before or after a general election. It is almost certain that a group of maybe 50 or more Labour MPs will simply refuse to support Corbyn as prime minister. By failing to take out these MPs now, Corbyn has all but ensured that he will never ever be in a position to form a government.

That is what the expulsion of Marc Wadsworth really means. Corbyn’s cowardice today guarantees he will ultimately be seen, despite his undoubted talents, as a weak-minded leader who was incapable of standing up to his own backbenchers.

The role of Jon Lansman and Momentum is even more despicable. Having created a 40,000-strong organisation, he has ensured that politically it is completely useless. In these debates Momentum carries absolutely no weight – a product of its own lack of democracy.